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THE  ALCHEMY  OF 
THOUGHT 


BY 


L.  P.  JACKS,  M.A. 

DBAN    OF    MANCHESTKR    COLLEGB,    OXFORD,    AND 
EDITOR   OF   "the    HIBBERT   JOURNAL" 


NEW   YORK 

HENRY   HOLT   AND   COMPANY 

LONDON 

WILLIAMS   AND   NORGATE 

1911 


PREFACE 

The  following  essays  deal  with  the  belief  that  logical 
system  is  only  one  among  countless  forms  in  the  self- 
expression  of  the  universe.  I  have  endeavoured  to  do 
justice  to  the  claims  of  system;  at  the  same  time  I 
have  resisted  these  claims  in  so  far  as  they  threaten  to 
usurp  the  whole  field  of  human  experience. 

To  say  that  the  universe  is  a  Rational  Whole  appears 
to  me  true.  But  to  treat  this  as  an  adequate  account 
of  Reality  appears  to  me  false.  I  am  equally  averse  to 
regarding  the  rationality  of  the  universe  as  the  funda- 
mental or  all-inclusive  or  even  the  dominant  form  of 
its  self-expression. 

What  does  form  a  Rational  Whole  and  is  adequately 
described  by  this  term  is  the  movement  of  thought 
throughout  the  ages — in  a  word,  the  History  of  Philo- 
sophy. To  equate  this  movement  with  the  universe 
to  which  it  refers,  to  make  the  History  of  Philosophy 
into  a  History  of  Reality,  appears  to  me  an  error. 

We  are  constantly  tempted  to  make  this  equation, 
and  constantly  prevented  from  seeing  its  falsity,  by  the 
habit  of  treating  speculative  thought  as  a  form  of  ours 
into  which  all  experience  must  manage  to  fit  itself. 
An  important  step  towards  liberation  from  this  habit 
was  taken  by  Spinoza,  who  treated  Thought  as  one  / 
among   the    infinite    and    eternal   forms   of  the    self- 


217048 


vi  PREFACE 

expression  of  Substance — as  one  and  one  only.  The 
benefits  of  this  liberty,  which  relieve  the  mind  from  a 
very  great  burden,  were  largely  sacrificed  in  the  subse- 
quent developments  of  Spinoza's  doctrine. 

In  much  that  follows  I  have  repeated  what  is  now 
common  doctrine  among  Pluralists.  But  Pluralism 
has  lost  much  of  the  strength  it  would  otherwise 
have  by  denying,  or  seeming  to  deny,  that  the  vmi verse 
does  express  itself  as  a  Rational  Whole.  This  denial, 
however,  is  by  no  means  involved  in  the  affirmation 
that  Reality  expresses  itself  in  many  ways  other  than 
those  which  fit  into  the  forms  of  conceptual  logic. 
It  is  certainly  true,  as  the  Pluralists  contend,  that  if  the 
universe  were  nothing  but  a  Rational  Whole — taking 
rational  in  its  strict  sense — the  richness  and  variety  of 
life  would  vanish  and  freedom  would  be  impossible. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  the  universe  were  not  rational, 
and  were  incapable  of  expressing  itself  in  that  form — 
if,  that  is,  Reality  were  forbidden  by  its  inner  constitu- 
tion from  taking  that  one  among  all  the  forms  of  a 
possible  self-expression — it  is  equally  plain  that  the 
world  would  be  no  place  for  beings  constituted  as 
we  are. 

It  will  be  said,  no  doubt,  that  this  last  statement  is 
itself  an  appeal  to  rationality.  This  rejoinder,  common 
as  it  has  now  become,  merely  serves  to  remind  us 
once  more  of  the  saying  that  logic  is  a  "  dodge."  As 
James  has  pointed  out,  the  word  "  rational  "  is  a  multi- 
dimensional term,  and  the  constant  effort  of  rationalism 
to  confute  all  critics  out  of  their  own  mouths  appears 
to  succeed  only  because  rationalists  expand  the  meaning 
of  the  term  "  rational "  with  every  step  in  the  progress 
of  their  opponents'  argument,  and  thus  make  it  serve 


PREFACE  vii 

the  changing  purpose  of  their  own.  The  rule  that 
"thought  cannot  go  behind  its  own  principles"  is  of 
great  importance,  so  long  as  we  are  dealing  with  ex- 
perience exclusively  as  a  Problem-to-be-solved,  and  I 
have  not  hesitated  to  make  full  use  of  it  in  the  essay 
on  "  Self-defeating  Theories  "  and  elsewhere.  But  when 
the  rule  is  strained  into  meaning  that  experience  must 
be  taken  as  a  Problem-to-be-solved,  and  as  that  alone, 
it  appears  to  me  unfair  and  inadmissible  ;  in  fact, 
neither  more  nor  less  than  a  logical  "dodge."  When 
once  we  have  fallen  into  this  trap  there  is,  of  course, 
no  escape ;  all  issues  are  foreclosed.  If  it  be  said  that 
the  very  process  by  which  we  avoid  the  trap  is  itself 
a  rational  process,  and  only  a  more  roundabout  way 
of  entering  the  toils,  I  must  again  protest  against  this 
fast-and-loose  usage  of  the  term  "  rational " ;  for  the 
"  reason "  which  avoids  the  trap  is  by  no  means  the 
same  "  reason  "  which  laid  it  in  the  first  instance. 

I  confess  it  is  only  after  some  hesitation  that  I 
venture  to  include  in  this  volume  the  allegorical  piece 
which  I  have  called  "  Devil's  Island  and  the  Isles  of 
Omniscience."  If  any  trained  student  of  philosophy 
should  read  my  book  I  trust  he  will  not  take  implacable 
offence  at  this  somewhat  unusual  method  of  exposition. 
My  object  in  that  piece  is  to  express  the  dissatisfaction 
and  rebelliousness  which  every  attempt  to  fix  experience 
into  the  form  of  a  logical  system  provokes  in  the  total 
personality.  I  found  myself  quite  unable  to  effect  my 
purpose  by  the  method  of  direct  exposition.  That  I 
have  succeeded  by  indirection  I  am  far  from  certain  ; 
but  I  shall  be  well  content  if  the  piece  calls  attention 
to  certain  by-products  of  philosophical  teaching  which 
are  too  little  regarded. 


viii  PREFACE 

The  essays  entitled  respectively  "The  Universe  as 
Philosopher,"  "The  Alchemy  of  Thought,"  "The 
Moral  Supremacy  of  Christendom,"  "Religion,"  have 
appeared  in  substance  in  The  Hibbert  JournaL  Into 
the  first  two  I  have  introduced  some  modifications, 
due  to  changes,  or,  as  one  always  ventures  to  hope,  to 
the  growth  of  thought. 

I  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude  to  Professor  Henry  Jones 
and  to  the  Rev.  Charles  B.  Upton  for  their  help  in 
revising  the  proofs.  The  criticisms  of  Professor  Jones 
have  been  all  the  more  valuable  because  of  his  radical 
dissent  from  some  of  my  main  positions.  My 
gratitude  to  Mr  Upton  is  deepened  by  the  circum- 
stance that  I  owe  to  him  my  first  interest  in  philo- 
sophical studies.  I  should  be  proud  to  think  that  he 
may  recognise  in  these  pages  some  trace  of  his  own 
influence,  as  well  as  of  that  of  his  master,  who  was 
also  my  own  teacher,  James  Martineau. 

L.  P.  JACKS. 

Manchester  College, 
Oxford,  191O. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


1.  The  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Plain  Man         ....  1 

2.  Art  and  Experience  .......         28 

3.  The  Usurpations  of  Language  .....         58 

4.  The  Universe  as  Philosopher  ......         79 

5.  The  Alchemy  of  Thought         .         .         .         .         .         .106 

6.  Insulated  Philosophy 129 

7.  Devil's  Island  and  the  Isles  of  Omniscience  :  An  Adven- 

ture AMONG  Abstractions      .         .         .         .         .         .138 

8.  Self-defeating  Theories 175 

9.  Is  There  a  Science  of  MAN.f*  .         .         .         .         .         .195 

10.  The  Manipulation  of  Man 224 

11.  Morality  by  the  Card 251 

12.  The  Quest  for  Safe-conduct    ......  270 

13.  Moral  Education 296 

14.  Religion 310 

15.  Is  the  Moral  Supremacy  of  Christendom  in  Danger?  .  323 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 


THE    ALCHEMY    OF 
THOUGHT 

L— THE  BITTER  CRY  OF  THE  PLAIN  MAN 

i  V  AN   APPEAL   TO    PHILOSOPHERS 

"  The  best  philosopher  is  the  man  who  can  think  most  simply.'^ 

John  Grote. 

Philosophy,  like  Religion,  has  to  endure  opposition 
from  a  law  in  the  members  which  wars  against  the  law 
of  the  mind.  But  as  the  rock-climber,  with  his  foot 
planted  on  a  three-inch  ledge,  owes  his  safety  to  the 
same  gravitation  which  draws  to  the  abyss,  so  it  may 
be  said  that  without  the  law  in  our  members  the 
law  of  the  mind  could  neither  get  nor  keep  its  hold. 
The  ultimate  relation  between  these  two  is  one  of  peace. 
Nevertheless,  for  Philosophy  as  for  Religion  there  are 
moments  of  dizziness  when  destruction  seems  imminent. 
Firmly  planted  on  the  truths  of  its  highest  experience,^ 
the  soul  presently  falls  into  a  mood  of  scepticism  or 
indifference  when  all  that  was  so  sure  an  hour  ago 
seems  incredible,  impossible,  absurd. 

Religious  men  have  never  scrupled  to  make  a  clean 
breast  of  this  matter.     They  have  rather  taken  pains 
to  describe  the  cunning  assaults  of  doubt,  that  others  "^ 
similarly  tempted  may  be  forewarned  and  forearmed. 


y 


2  THE   ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

When  we  turn  from  Religion  to  Philosophy  (which, 
I  venture  to  think,  is  at  bottom  rather  an  Experience 
^  or  Life  than  a  set  of  doctrines  cut  and  dried),  we  find 
that  philosophers  have  less  to  tell  us  about  their  mis- 
givings. Perhaps  they  do  well  to  keep  silence,  for 
their  work  is  to  exhibit  the  Truth  as  true.  There  is, 
at  all  events,  a  sharp  contrast  between  the  religious 
man,  on  the  one  hand,  who  confesses  his  weakness, 
acknowledges  the  difficulty  of  keeping  the  faith,  and 
prays  to  heaven  for  strength  to  subdue  the  treachery 
of  his  heart,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  philosophic 
man  with  his  frequent  air  of  having  settled  the 
question.  Judging  philosophers  from  the  atmosphere 
of  their  works,  we  should  scarcely  suspect  that  they 
were  subject  to  grave  misgivings  and  sinkings  of  the 
heart,  when  they  feel  their  systems  turning  hollow, 
their  arguments  losing  relevance,  and  the  very  meaning 
of  their  work  on  the  point  of  vanishing  into  thinnest  air. 

And  yet,  were  philosophers  to  write  their  Confessions, 
as  St  Augustine  wrote  his,  I  doubt  not  that  abundant 
witness  would  be  borne  to  these  misgivings.  We  have 
all  known  philosophers  in  what  are  called  their  lighter 
moments,  though  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  these  are 
sometimes  the  most  serious  moments  of  their  lives. 
We  know  that  between  the  philosopher  as  exhibited  in 
his  works  and  the  philosopher  as  we  encounter  him 
elsewhere  there  is  a  difference :  sometimes  a  difference 
which  we  welcome  and  sometimes  a  difference  which 
we  deplore.  And  having  observed  the  contrast  we  can 
hardly  doubt  that  for  him,  as  for  the  religious  man, 
there  are  times  of  eclipse,  times  when  his  philosophy 
slips  from  his  grasp  and  fades  away,  times  when  it  is 
only  by  the  greatest  effort  of  mind  that  he  can  apply 


THE   BITTER   CRY   OF  THE   PLAIN   MAN  8 

his  philosophic  insight  to  his  present  condition.  Nor 
does  he  show  any  reluctance  when  questioned  to  acknow- 
ledge that  this  is  even  so.  **  My  philosophy,"  he  will 
say,  **  did  ultimately  help  me  on  the  occasions  to  which 
you  refer  ;  but  it  was  only  after  a  very  severe  struggle 
with  my  unphilosophic  self." 

Now  this  unphilosophic  self  of  the  philosopher  does 
occasionally  put  in  an  appearance  in  the  pages  of  the 
profoundest  thinkers,  though  he  does  so,  if  I  may  be 
pardoned  for  saying  it,  in  a  somewhat  mythological 
shape.  He  appears,  that  is  to  say,  as  a  person  with 
whom  our  author  has  a  purely  external  or  bowing 
acquaintance,  and  the  name  given  him  is  "the  Plain 
Man."  We  are  left  to  suppose  that  the  Plain  Man  is 
some  person  whom  the  writer,  as  he  looks  up  from  his 
desk,  sees  passing  in  the  street ;  or  he  is  the  casual 
acquaintance  of  a  railway  journey ;  or  he  is  some 
butcher,  baker,  or  candlestick-maker,  who  receives  and 
executes  the  orders  of  the  Herr  Professor  or  the  Prau 
Professorin.  We  are  left,  I  say,  to  suppose  this ;  but 
the  supposition  is  seldom  true.  Nine  times  out  of  ten 
the  Plain  Man  is  just  the  philosopher  himself  in  one  of 
those  not  infrequent  moments  when  he  is  overtaken  by 
an  eclipse  of  his  philosophic  faith.  The  Plain  Man  is  a 
living  protest,  originating  in  the  heart  of  the  philosopher, 
against  the  over-rigidity  or  the  over-refinement  of  his 
system.  He  is,  in  fact,  the  unphilosophic  self;  a 
person  with  whom  our  author  has  a  far  more  intimate 
acquaintance  than  he  is  always  willing  to  confess ;  and 
his  utterances,  his  illusions,  his  obstinacy,  instead  of 
being  remote  and  external  phenomena  observed  from 
the  philosophic  watch-tower,  are  the  autobiographical 
confessions  of  some  metaphysician  who,  to  all  seeming, 


4  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

would  utterly  conceal  his  human  personality  from  the 
reader  and  write  as  though  he  were  animated  by  the 
spirit  of  Pure  Reason  alone. 

The  present  writer  has,  in  what  follows,  endeavoured 
to  make  the  Plain  Man  speak  in  this  character. 
Throughout  his  studies  of  philosophy  and  his  succes- 
sive conversions  to  this  school  and  to  that,  he  has 
been  conscious  that  there  existed  in  his  mind  an 
unconverted  residuum,  which  constantly  criticised  and 
challenged  the  converted  part  of  him  to  give  an  account 
of  itself.  This  unconverted  residuum  is  here  introduced 
as  the  Plain  Man.  We  may  think  of  him  as  playing  a 
part  like  that  of  the  chorus  in  a  Greek  tragedy.  His 
station  is  within  the  soul ;  and  he  accompanies  the  suc- 
cessive phases  of  the  mind's  drama,  not  as  a  participant 
but  as  a  spectator,  and  yet  a  spectator  whose  comments 
are  not  without  their  influence  on  the  action  of  the  main 
characters.  Whether  the  Plain  Man,  considered  as  the 
next  individual  who  passes  my  window,  will  recognise 
any  resemblance  between  himself  and  the  personage  here 
presented,  I  do  not  know,  and  I  do  not  ask.  Some  may 
even  think  that  the  Plain  Man  of  the  following  pages 
does  not  deserve  the  name  he  bears ;  that  possibly  he 
would  be  more  correctly  designated  as  "The  Tempter" 
to  whom  retro  Satanas  is  the  fitting  word ;  but  the 
justification  for  retaining  the  former  name  is  that, 
so  far  as  I  understand  him,  he  is  identically  the  same 
individual  as  he  who  is  called  the  Plain  Man  in 
accredited  works  of  philosophy.  He  is,  in  short,  the 
philosopher  himself,  with  his  pallium  laid  aside. 

It  may  be  said  that  any  person  who  hears  the  Plain 
Man  pleading  within  him  as  he  pleads  in  the  sequel 
thereby  makes  confession  of  his  own  failure  to  attain 


THE   BITTER   CRY   OF  THE   PLAIN   MAN  5 

philosophic  insight.  Is  it  not  the  business  of  philos- 
ophy to  reconcile  a  man  with  himself,  and  does  it  not 
follow  therefore  that  an  unconverted  residuum  is  the 
sure  sign  of  a  dabbler  or  a  neophyte  ? 

This,  I  must  admit,  is  a  tenable  supposition.  For 
the  present,  however,  its  point  may  be  turned  aside  by 
reiterating  what  has  already  been  said,  viz.  that  moments 
do  occur,  even  to  illustrious  thinkers  whose  philosophy 
reconciles  them  with  themselves,  when  the  reconciliation 
somehow  fails  to  work  and  the  old  conflict  breaks  out 
anew.  Moreover,  an  occasional  uprush  of  the  Plain 
Man  into  the  philosophic  consciousness  is  no  more 
remarkable  than  the  existence  of  plain  men,  in  the 
usual  sense  of  the  term,  in  the  world  at  large.  We 
cannot  understand  how  it  comes  to  pass  that  in  the 
midst  of  that  complete  experience  which  we  ascribe  to 
the  Unitary  Soul  of  things,  and  forming,  as  it  were,  an 
integral  part  of  the  consciousness  of  that  Being,  there 
exist  a  multitude  of  individuals  like  ourselves  whose 
experience  is  admittedly  incomplete — ^just  plain  men. 
If  the  truth  of  Divine  Immanence  is  to  be  taken 
seriously  we  must  suppose  that  the  protests,  the 
pleadings,  the  bitter  cries  of  millions  of  plain  men 
surge  up  continually  in  the  Unitary  Mind  and  con- 
stitute a  part  of  its  experience.  Now  no  one  would 
think  of  describing  God  as  a  dabbler  or  a  neophyte 
because  the  constitution  of  the  universe  involved  this 
continual  presence  in  the  Divine  Consciousness  of  the 
Plain  Man's  limitations  and  difficulties.  The  philos- 
opher, therefore,  has  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of  if  on 
reflection  he  is  forced  to  confess  that  voices  from  a 
world  where  insight  is  clouded  occasionally  make  them- 
selves heard  in  the  heaven  of  his  loftiest  vision ;  nor 


6  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

will  he,  being  who  he  is,  cast  about  for  hard  names  to 
throw  at  humbler  persons  who  make  this  confession 
without  any  shame  at  all — much  as  these  persons  de- 
serve contempt  on  other  grounds.  If  it  is  a  misfortune 
to  have  to  hear  the  importunities  of  the  unphilosophic 
self  delivered  in  one's  own  heart,  it  is  a  misfortune  we 
share  with  the  universe  at  large,  or  with  whatever  Soul 
the  universe  may  express.  God,  if  one  may  use  that 
term,  seems  to  be  wonderfully  patient  with  the  plain 
men  who  live  in  His  bosom,  making  His  sun  to  rise 
on  the  butcher,  baker,  or  candlestick-maker  as  well  as 
upon  Plato,  Spinoza,  or  Kant.  Is  it  too  much  to  ask 
philosophers  to  grant  a  small  measure  of  that  patience 
to  the  Plain  Man  who  is  now  to  speak  ? 


THE   BITTER   CRY   OF  THE   PLAIN   MAN 


THE   APPEAL 

"  Gentlemen,  there  is  some  misunderstanding  between 
you  and  us  which  we,  no  less  than  you,  would  fain 
remove.  There  have  been  faults  on  both  sides,  and  the 
greater  fault  has  been  with  us.  That  you  have  an  in- 
dictment against  us  we  all  know.  Our  petulance,  our 
obstinacy,  our  suspicion,  deserve  your  rebuke ;  our 
stupidity  deserves  your  pity.  On  your  side,  however, 
there  has  been  some  aloofness ;  you  have  made  it  diffi- 
cult for  us  to  get  at  you,  while  at  the  same  time  you 
have  claimed  the  right  to  descend  upon  us  from  your 
great  castles  and  harry  our  defenceless  fields  at  your  will. 
And  may  we  not  also  plead  that  there  has  been  some 
want  of  perspective  in  the  judgments  you  have  passed 
upon  us  ?  Justly  conscious  of  the  great  gulf  between 
our  easy  ignorance  and  your  hard-won  wisdom,  you 
have  not  truly  measured  the  greater  gulf  between  your 
wisdom  and  that  of  God.  Viewed  from  that  end,  are 
not  you  also  plain  men  like  ourselves  ?  Does  not  all 
the  trouble,  indeed,  arise  from  this — that  neither  party 
is  plain  enough  ?  Let  us  endeavour  at  least  to  be  plain 
with  one  another.  Then  we  shall  surely  discover 
enough  philosophy  in  the  Plain  Man,  and  enough  plain- 
ness in  the  philosopher,  to  make  us  the  best  of  friends. 

"  Do  not  believe  the  evil  tongues  which  say  the  Plain 
Man  has  no  dealings  with  the  Philosopher.  Our  interest 
in  your  work  is  great — greater  than  you  are  wont  to 
imagine.  Many  of  us  have  done  our  best  to  under- 
stand you,  clinging  to  our  plainness  the  while  with 
perhaps  excessive  zeal.  We  have  tried  to  raise  our- 
selves to  your  level,  not  doubting  that  you  had  won 
further  on  the  upward  way  of  life  than  we.     Nor  are  we 


8  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

ungrateful  for  the  friendly  hands  so  often  extended  by 
you  to  help  our  feeble  effort  to  rise.  We  acknowledge 
our  debt  to  the  Great  Masters.  In  their  faces  always,  and 
in  their  books  sometimes,  we  perceive  a  genuine  concern 
for  the  troubles  of  the  poor  Plain  Man.  They  have  seen 
the  frequent  tragedy  of  his  life ;  and  their  own  lives  have 
been  freely  given  that  they  might  find  him  a  key  to  the 
mysteries  of  his  being.  Often,  indeed,  when  asking  for 
bread  they  have  given  him  a  stone ;  but  the  stone  was 
all  they  had  to  give,  and  the  winning  of  it  had  cost 
them  dear.  And  a  strange  thing  would  sometimes 
come  to  pass.  The  spirit  of  their  giving  would  enter 
into  the  gift,  and,  working  there  like  a  powerful  alchemy, 
would  turn  that  stone  into  the  Plain  Man's  bread  !  Oh, 
we  have  seen  it,  and  our  hearts  have  overflowed  with 
gratitude  to  the  giver  who  gave  so  much  better  than  he 
knew  !  Gentlemen,  among  all  your  critics  it  is  often 
the  Plain  Man  who  understands  you  best.  Baffled  by 
the  hardness  of  your  written  words,  he  falls  into  a  habit 
of  reading  you  between  the  lines.  He  gives  you  credit 
for  the  things  you  leave  unsaid,  because  you  cannot  say 
them.  Is  it  not,  then,  a  matter  for  infinite  regret  that 
you  and  we  should  meet  so  often  as  strangers  ?  There 
ought  to  be  more  in  common  between  us.  There  ought 
to  be  more  interchange  of  thought. 

"  Yes,  interchange  of  thought.  For  perhaps  you  have 
.  not  realised  as  fully  as  you  might  have  done  that  we, 
too,  are  thinkers  of  a  sort.  By  some  of  you,  indeed, 
our  thinking  has  not  been  overlooked  ;  it  has  been 
treated  with  even  more  respect  than  it  deserves.  But, 
broadly  speaking,  you  have  been  too  unwilling  to  let 
the  Plain  Man  speak  for  himself.  You  have  insisted  on 
speaking  for  him,  and  many  of  the  words  you  put  into 


THE   BITTER   CRY   OF  THE   PLAIN   MAN  9 

his  mouth  do  scant  justice  to  his  thoughts.  He  has  a 
richer  Ufe  than  that  for  which  you  give  him  credit ;  and 
because  his  Ufe  is  richer,  his  troubles  also  are  deeper 
than  you  imagine.  Gentlemen,  the  thirst  of  the  Plain 
Man  is  great ;  it  craves  abundance  of  water.  You  must 
dig  your  wells  deeper  if  you  are  to  satisfy  him.  Both 
you  and  he  must  become  far  plainer  men  I 

"  Your  books  are  often  crabbed,  but  the  kindly  faces 
among  you  embolden  us  to  speak.  We  are  thinking 
of  the  great  ones,  or  rather  of  the  greatest.  If  there 
are  any  of  your  followers  who  would  drive  us  from  the 
doors  with  sticks  and  with  stones,  you  will  forbid 
them.  We  are  come  to  speak  with  the  Masters  of 
the  House.  Of  such  we  have  known  several  among 
the  living,  and  never  once  have  we  seen  them  frown 
upon  the  poor  Plain  Man.  We  have  met  them  also 
among  the  mighty  dead  ;  for  of  these  too  we  know 
something,  thanks  to  the  excellent  books  which  you 
have  written  especially  for  us.  We  open  a  little  treatise 
on  Spinoza ;  we  see  before  us  the  portrait  of  the  sage, 
and  as  we  look  into  his  wise  and  gentle  eyes  we  say 
to  ourselves,  '  Here  is  one  to  whom  the  Plain  Man 
might  confess  himself  without  shame.'  Confident  that 
there  are  many  among  you  on  whom  that  spirit  has 
fallen,  we  shall  use  great  boldness  of  speech.  There 
are  many ;  would  that  there  were  more  I  For  often, 
alas,  there  comes  into  your  councils  another  spirit  which 
strikes  the  Plain  Man  dumb.  Something  forced  in 
your  manner,  something  hard  on  your  faces,  something 
strident  in  your  speech,  warns  us  to  hold  our  peace. 
Then  it  is  that  we  would  rather  suffer  you  to  speak 
wrongly  on  our  behalf  than  say  one  single  word  for 
ourselves.     For  the  Plain  Man  has  a  sensitive  soul,  and 


10        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

goes  away  sorrowful  from  all  assemblies  where  the 
fingers  of  cavil  are  playing  on  the  harp-strings  of  life. 

**  Gentlemen,  we  are  going  to  make  a  full  confession, 
hoping  thereby  to  ease  ourselves  of  a  perilous  load 
that  weighs  upon  the  heart.  There  shall  be  faithful 
dealing  on  our  side.  Knowing  your  good-will  towards 
us,  we  will  tell  you  plainly  wherein  you  have  failed  to 
help  us  hitherto.  You  shall  feel  our  minds  reacting  on 
your  own  doctrines,  and  if  they  react  with  some  bitter- 
ness we  shall  try  to  make  you  feel  it  none  the  less. 
Not  of  our  wants  alone,  nor  of  our  difficulties,  shall 
we  speak,  but  also  of  our  disappointment,  it  may  be 
of  our  anger,  and  of  any  secret  grudge  we  harbour 
against  yourselves.  We  have  declared  our  gratitude 
already,  and  by  nothing  that  follows  shall  the  declara- 
tion be  unsaid ;  but  gratitude  is  obstructed  and  mixed 
with  other  emotions,  and  these  also  shall  be  revealed. 
Will  you  not  be  patient  while  we  make  a  clean  breast 
of  it  all  ?  If  we  have  hard  things  to  say,  you,  who  are 
wise,  will  bear  with  us  ;  you  will  listen  and  discriminate 
and  answer  us,  not  by  rude  words  of  contempt,  but  by 
showing  us  a  better  way.  It  is  a  hard  thing  to  ask,  a 
high  thing  to  expect ;  but  we  remember  to  whom  we 
speak.  Such  is  our  confidence  in  your  wisdom  that  we 
are  even  content  to  become  fools  for  your  sakes. 

"  We  doubt  whether  you,  as  a  body,  have  ever  been 
deeply  desirous  of  our  conversion ;  for  we  cannot  but 
observe  that  with  rare  but  splendid  exceptions  your 
efforts  to  convert  us  have  been  short-lived,  intermittent, 
and  ill- conceived.  Too  many  of  you,  seated  in  the  high 
places  of  Zion,  have  waited  for  the  Gentiles  to  come  to 
the  light,  and  when  they  came  not,  have  betrayed  an 
aristocratic  indifference   to  their  salvation.     You  have 


THE   BITTER   CRY   OF  THE   PLAIN   MAN  11 

taken  no  pains  to  acquire  their  language  that  you  might 
speak  to  them  in  a  tongue  they  can  understand,  but 
have  required  them  to  learn  yours,  a  condition  which 
you  must  know  they  cannot  fulfil. 

"Are  you  content  with  this  estrangement  between 
you  and  us  ?  Shall  we  not  try  to  understand  each 
other?  Will  you  not  deign  to  listen  to  the  stammering 
tongue  of  the  Plain  Man  and  bear  with  him  while  he 
lays  his  trouble  before  you  ? 

"  In  the  first  place,  then,  we  ask  you  to  consider  that 
things  have  a  language  of  their  own  which  is  richly 
eloquent  to  the  Plain  Man.  Beyond  the  information 
needed  for  his  present  purpose,  in  which  the  Plain  Man 
is  ever  thankful  for  your  help,  things  go  on  speaking  to 
him  about  matters  which  have  nothing  to  do  with  any 
purpose  of  his,  and  which,  though  perfectly  clear,  are 
not  translatable  into  the  language  of  purpose,  but  must 
remain  for  ever  embedded  in  the  more  musical  speech 
in  which  they  are  first  spoken.  There  are  tongues  in 
trees  and  sermons  in  stones ;  but  in  order  to  hear  them 
you  must  take  the  tree  at  its  own  valuation,  the  stone 
on  its  own  terms,  and  not  try  to  make  either  stone  or 
tree  speak  any  language  of  yours.  Set  the  stone  upright 
with  a  black  coat  on  the  back  of  it  and  it  will  preach  no 
more  of  the  sermons  we  love  to  hear.  Cut  down  the 
tree  and  make  it  into  an  image  of  your  god  and  the 
divine  tongue  that  is  within  it  falls  dumb.  Leave  it,  we 
beseech  you,  to  tell  some  part  of  its  story  in  its  own  way. 

"  For  it  is  precisely  this  part  of  the  message  of  things 
which  most  interests  the  Plain  Man  and  gives  him  the 
joy  of  life.  Whether  that  other  part  of  this  message 
which  you  translate  for  him  into  the  language  of  his 
purpose  has  anything  to  do  with  this  infinitely  vaster 


12        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

part  which  so  often  escapes  you,  is  precisely  one  of  those 
points  on  which  the  Plain  Man  will  be  grateful  for 
further  information.  But  leaving  that  aside,  please 
attend,  gentlemen,  to  the  outstanding  fact ;  which  is, 
that  what  the  Plain  Man  loves  most  and  values  highest 
in  the  world  is  the  untranslated  part  of  the  world's 
message.  Though  untranslated  he  finds  it,  as  we  said, 
eloquent  and  precious ;  so  much  so  indeed  that  he  re- 
sponds to  it  with  a  degree  of  welcome,  of  enthusiasm,  of 
delight,  which  he  can  only  express  by  lifting  up  his  head 
and  smoothing  the  wrinkles  out  of  his  ape-like  brow,  by 
clothing  himself  in  gorgeous  apparel,  by  making  music, 
by  carving  statues  of  the  gods,  or  even  by  laying  down 
his  life  as  a  ransom  for  many.  Nay,  more.  Were  it 
not  for  that  part  of  the  world's  message  which  he  cannot 
and  does  not  wish  to  translate,  there  are  times  when 
that  other  part  which  you  interpret  would  become  in- 
tolerable, would  overwhelm  him  with  despair,  and  he 
would  snatch  at  a  bare  bodkin  and  end  his  life. 

"  Of  this  vast  comfort,  of  this  abiding  joy,  of  this 
heavenly  refuge  from  the  storm,  the  Plain  Man  often 
feels  himself  bereft  in  your  presence.  You  will  not  allow 
the  world  to  speak  that  language  of  its  own  which,  so 
long  as  it  remains  in  the  original,  is  the  Word  of  Life 
to  the  Plain  Man.  All  that,  you  insist,  is  misrepre- 
sentation ;  the  world  left  to  itself  to  tell  its  own  story 
in  its  ovni  way  cannot  do  other  than  mislead.  And 
you  propose  to  rectify  the  distorted  lines  of  the  universe 
by  forcing  them  into  the  straight  moulds  of  your 
philosophy.  Instead  of  the  universe  you  give  us  your 
system,  your  science,  your  book.  *This  system,'  you 
say,  *  is  the  tongue  of  the  world ;  this  book  is  the 
message  of  things;  this  Science   is  the  speech  of  the 


THE   BITTER  CRY   OF  THE   PLAIN  MAN         13 

Real.     Here  are  published  the  sermons  of  the  stones ; 
here  are  written  down  the  language  of  the  stars  and 
the  true  voices  of  the  running  brook.'     Oh,  gentlemen,  J^ 
it  is  a  poor  exchange  ! 

"  And  now,  what  happens  next  ?  Well,  you  are  not 
all  alike ;  but  the  Plain  Man  is  no  chooser ;  he  takes 
the  first  guidance  that  offers,  and,  alas,  it  is  seldom  the 
best.  He  opens  your  book  as  you  bid  him ;  and  lo, 
his  gorgeous  palaces,  his  towers  of  defence,  fade  like  an 
unsubstantial  pageant  and  leave  not  a  wrack  behind. 
His  world  is  spoilt,  the  voices  he  loved  are  silenced. 
The  ineffable  poetry  of  things  is  reduced  to  crabbed 
prose.  The  breath  of  life  is  stifled.  The  world  has 
become  all  that  the  Plain  Man  loved  it  for  not  being. 
He  loved  it  because  it  ever  seemed  to  say  to  him  pre- 
cisely what  it  meant.  You  have  made  it  equivocal 
and  obscure.  He  loved  it  because  it  was  disingenuous ; 
you  have  made  it  a  conundrum.  '  The  Riddle  of  the 
Universe ' !  What  kind  of  a  universe  is  that  which 
addresses  the  soul  as  nothing  but  a  Riddle  ?  A  devil's 
universe  through  and  through.  What  kind  of  a  Reality 
is  that  which  for  ever  seems  to  be  what  it  is  not  ?  A 
nightmare  horror,  a  hideous  dream,  a  thing  in  whose 
presence  our  souls  take  up  a  lamentation  like  that  of 
Rachel,  weeping  for  children  that  are  no  more.^ 

"And  what  of  the  Plain  Man's  God ?  Gentlemen, 
the  Plain  Man  knows  just  as  well  as  you  do  that  his 
conception  of  God  is  a  most  unphilosophical  affair. 
But  what  you  seldom  understand  is  that  the  Plain  Man 
loves  his  God,  worships  his  God,  tries  to  serve  his  God 
just  so  far  as  He  transcends  the  bounds  of  your  systems. 

^  "  Dialectic  is  the  universal  and  irresistible  power  before  which 
nothing  can  stay."     Hegel,  Smaller  Logic^  tr.  Wallace,  p.  128. 


14        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

Made  philosophical,  as  some  of  you  would  make  it,  the 
Object  of  the  Plain  Man's  devotion  would  lose  every 
attribute  which  he  recognises  as  Divine.  Do  you  realise 
what  you  are  doing  ? 

"  You  have  told  us  many  times  that  we  are  a  poor 
anthropomorphic  lot  of  heathens,  and  you  have  quoted 
the  old  saw  about  the  religious  lions  whose  gods  are 
bigger  lions  than  themselves.  It  is  true.  And  yet  we 
have  often  thought  that  there  is  no  class  of  men  in  this 
world,  certainly  not  the  class  of  plain  men,  who  confirm 
that  saw  more  neatly  than  some  of  you.  For  what  are 
you — and  what  is  your  God  ?  Is  it  not  the  business  of 
many  of  you  to  rack  your  brains  in  the  contriving 
of  hard  questions  that  you  may  put  the  trembling 
neophyte  to  the  test?  And  what  kind  of  a  Person 
is  God  when  we  think  of  Him  as  these  say  we  ought  ? 
Gentlemen,  their  God  is  an  Examiner  like  them- 
selves. Their  God,  we  repeat,  with  his  Riddle  of  a 
Universe,  is  a  Magnified  Examiner  made  in  their  own 
image,  a  Being  who  has  no  dealings  with  his  creatures 
save  such  as  he  may  express  under  the  form  of  questions, 
problems,  conundrums,  which  the  creature  must  answer 
aright  at  great  pain  and  peril  to  himself.  '  Life,'  said 
one  who  addressed  us  not  long  ago,  *  life  is  the  passing 
or  the  failing  to  pass  of  a  continual  examination  ' ;  and 
in  so  saying  he  disclosed,  if  we  mistake  not,  the  inner- 
most nerve  of  his  thought.  What,  according  to  such 
an  one,  is  a  fact  ?  Something  whose  sole  reason  for 
being  is  the  need  to  get  itself  explained  ;  problematic 
in  essence,  interesting  only  so  far  as  understood.  His 
facts  when  they  come  before  us  do  not  say,  '  We  are 
what  we  seem ' ;  they  say  rather,  '  We  are  not  what  we 
pretend  to   be ;    find  out  therefore  what  we   are,  and 


THE   BITTER   CRY  OF  THE  PLAIN   MAN         15 

beware  of  the  consequences  if  you  fail.'  Thus  experi- 
ence is  converted  into  an  interminable  Examination 
Paper,  and  God  is  the  author  of  it.  The  universe,  of 
whose  intelligibility  you  are  so  anxious  that  we  should 
be  convinced,  is  intelligible  only  in  the  same  sense  as 
the  questions  are  which  these,  with  deliberate  and  some- 
times sinister  cunning,  contrive  as  a  sore  trial  for  the 
sons  of  men.  *  I  Am  That  I  Am '  is  no  more ;  '  What 
Am  I  ? '  has  usurped  his  place.  Not  for  one  instant 
does  '  What  Am  I  ? '  leave  us  alone.  Written  and  viva 
voce,  graven  in  the  rocks,  traced  in  vast  letters  on  the 
midnight  sky,  volleyed  in  the  thunder,  whispered  in  the 
breeze,  hummed  by  the  beating  heart,  sibilating  in 
lovers'  sighs — the  awful  interrogation  pursues  its  course, 
and  the  Inexorable  Examiner,  seated  on  a  throne  more 
terrible  than  that  of  any  king  or  judge,  looks  out  upon 
the  poor  examinees  with  the  cold  eyes  of  a  Perfect 
Rationality,  abiding  the  answer.     Such  is  their  God. 

"  Is  it  surprising,  then,  that  many  of  us  have  come  to 
think  of  you  with  some  bitterness  of  heart?  For  to 
you,  we  often  think,  is  owing  much  of  the  sorrow  that 
afflicts  us  in  these  modern  days.  First  and  foremost, 
there  is  the  burden  of  all  this  weary,  unintelligible  world. 
We  deny  it  not.  We  see  ^t  waiting  for  every  man  at 
his  appointed  hour.  But  who  has  tied  it  upon  our 
backs  for  ever  as  a  thing  from  which  there  is  no  escape  ? 
Who  has  brought  it  to  pass  that  the  weary  weight 
never  leaves  us  ?  Who  has  put  a  question  in  the 
mouth  of  every  fact  and  plied  us  with  riddles  till  we 
reel  and  stagger  and  are  at  our  wits'  end  ?  Gentlemen, 
you  have  overdone  all  this.  You  have  forced  your 
riddles  in  season  and  out ;  and  not  content  with  those  the 
world  will   furnish,  you  have  invented  others  of  your 


16        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

own.  It  is  you  who  hold  us  to  the  question  night  and 
day.  Have  you  not  dealt  too  hardly  with  the  Plain 
Man  ?  Is  it  none  of  your  doing  that  this  bad  dream 
never  leaves  us — the  dream  that  we  carry  on  our  backs 
the  weary  weight  of  an  unintelligible  world?  Have 
you  not  made  of  life  a  blacker  mystery  than  you  need  ? 

"  There  is  a  mystery  in  life ;  but  is  there  not  some- 
thing else?  By  your  showing  the  mystery  seems 
omnipresent,  pervasive,  essential;  in  the  real  scheme 
of  things  it  is  occasional,  and  attached  as  it  were  to 
only  one  point  on  the  ever-turning  wheel  of  life. 
Again,  there  is  a  puzzle  in  the  world ;  we  know  it 
well.  By  your  showing  the  world  holds  it  like  a  pistol 
at  the  reluctant  head  of  man ;  in  the  real  scheme  of 
things,  however,  it  is  mercifully  hidden  until  the 
appointed  hour  draws  nigh.  Yes,  there  are  ten 
thousand  matters  of  negotiation  between  us  and  the 
world  which  we  can  carry  through  from  start  to  finish 
with  no  thought  given  to  your  Sphinx-riddles.  Oh, 
leave  them  in  their  place !  Sufficient  unto  the  day  is 
the  evil  thereof  1 

"  Your  business,  you  tell  us,  is  to  solve  problems,  and 
we  have  no  right  to  complain  of  you  for  trying  to  solve 
them.  *  If  you  don't  like  us,'  you  say,  '  leave  us.  We 
will  attend  to  our  business  and  you  to  yours.  No  one 
compels  you  to  read  our  books.  Keep  to  religion  or 
poetry,  or  whatever  else  may  give  you  satisfaction,  and 
leave  the  problems  alone.  The  remedy  is  in  your  own 
hands.' 

"  Gentlemen,  the  advice  is  good,  but  the  trouble  is 
that  you  will  not  suffer  us  to  follow  it.  We  go  away, 
as  you  suggest ;  we  leave  you,  as  we  think,  to  your- 
selves ;  we  go  to  the  church  or  to  some  other  place 


THE   BITTER  CRY  OF  THE   PLAIN   MAN         17 

where  a  Plain  Man  may  find  comfort — and  lo,  you  are 
there  before  us,  waiting,  as  it  were,  at  the  very  doors. 
We  would  fain  say  our  prayers,  but  who  is  this  at  our 
elbow  who  whispers  *  Answer,'  '  Understand,'  '  Solve '  ? 
Barely  have  we  time  to  cry  the  name  of  God  before  we 
are  bidden  to  define  our  terms  and  explain  what  we 
mean.  Did  we  not  go  to  church  the  other  day  and  lift 
up  our  hearts  in  a  song  of  gratitude  to  the  All-wise, 
and  did  not  one  of  your  number  thereupon  go  up  into 
the  pulpit  and  entertain  us,  for  fifty  minutes,  with  an 
apology  for  his  God  ?  Oh,  it  was  not  wisely  done ! 
Alas,  there  is  no  getting  away  from  you.  What  avails 
it  that  we  forsake  your  dwellings  and  betake  our- 
selves to  religion,  if  you  are  there  before  us  with  the 
*  Problem  of  Religion  '  in  your  hands  ? 

"  Is  there  not  something  artificial  about  all  this,  some 
thing  forced,  something  overdone  ?  Do  you  not  often 
compel  us  to  take  our  Experience  in  the  form  of  a 
Problem  when  there  is  no  need  ?  Are  you  not  less 
merciful,  or  less  wisely  reticent,  than  the  universe  you 
would  fain  interpret  ?  Ah,  how  pale,  how  sicklied  o'er, 
the  world  would  be  had  it  nothing  to  offer  us,  nothing 
to  say  to  us,  save  what  can  be  offered  as  Problem-and- 
answer,  save  what  can  be  said  in  the  language  of  your 
systems,  your  science,  and  your  books !  Do  you  not 
realise  how  the  constant  forcing  of  Experience  into  that 
mould  wears  down  the  spirits  of  the  Plain  Man  and  puts 
him  at  odds  with  his  life  ?  Will  you  not  try  to  under- 
stand. Gnostics  and  Agnostics  alike,  that  to  him  the 
world  is  neither  a  riddle  with  an  answer,  nor  a  riddle 
without  one,  but  just  no  riddle  at  all  1  To  him  the 
world  is  the  world  and  there's  the  end  !     Often  it  seems 

to  him  that  he  can  live  his  life  all  the  better  for  having 

2 


\ 

\ 


18        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

no  'Theory  of  the  Universe'  to  hamper  him.  For 
those  who  want  such  things  they  are  perhaps  to  be  had, 
and  when  they  get  them  they  will  find,  no  doubt,  that 
the  theoretical  side  of  things  is  neatly  covered  by  the 
theory.  But  here  the  Plain  Man  remembers  what  wiser 
persons  are  apt  to  forget.  He  remembers  that  Experi- 
ence has  something  to  offer  us  all  which  is  not  theoreti- 
cal. Deeply  were  we  touched  by  a  remark  once  made 
to  us  by  the  plainest  man  we  ever  knew.  '  I  would  not 
insult  the  universe,'  said  he,  *  by  pretending  to  under- 
stand it.'  Was  he  condemned  out  of  his  own  mouth  ? 
Did  he  proclaim  by  his  words  that  already  he  under- 
stood the  universe  after  a  fashion  ?  Perhaps  so,  gentle- 
men ;  but  his  fashion  was  not  yours. 

"And  now  let  us  try  to  explain  how  the  diffi- 
culties and  perplexities  of  our  life  are  apt  to  become 
greater  and  not  less  when  we  try  to  follow  you  in  your 
'interpretation'  of  our  experience.  In  the  first  place, 
we  cannot  escape  the  conclusion  that  if  you  are  right  in 
these  interpretations,  we,  on  our  side,  are  the  victims  of 
some  strange  illusions.  We  know  that  some  of  you 
deny  this  and  speak  words  of  comfort  to  our  wounded 
amour  propre.  But  when  all  is  said  it  still  seems  to  us 
that,  on  your  showing,  we  plain  men  have  got  things 
topsy-turvy  and  turned  them  inside  out.  And  our  first 
difficulty  is  to  understand  the  source  of  our  own  error. 

"  Opposite  our  window  we  see  a  rose-bush.  One  of 
you  informs  us  that  the  rose-bush  is  '  a  construction  of 
the  mind ' ;  another  that  it  is  'a  group  of  sense  impres- 
sions ' ;  another  that  it  is  'a  projected  idea.'  Now,  if 
any  such-like  *  interpretation '  of  the  rose-bush  is  true, 
it    seems    certain   that    the    rose-bush    is    playing   us 


THE   BITTER   CRY   OF  THE   PLAIN   MAN         19 

a  trick.  We  take  the  rose-bush  for  just  what  it 
declares  itself  to  be,  and  this  does  not  bear  the  slightest 
resemblance  to  *  a  construction  of  the  mind '  or  to 
anything  of  that  kind. 

"  Well,  we  plain  men  may  be  wrong  when  we  take 
that  rose-bush  on  its  own  terms  and  refuse  to  accept  it 
on  yours.  But  if  so,  we  cannot  help  wondering  what 
it  was  that  first  started  us  on  the  wrong  road  and  kept 
us  on  the  wrong  road  up  to  the  present  moment.  If 
the  bush  really  is  and  always  has  been  what  you  say, 
then  how  came  it  to  pass  that  any  son  of  man  ever  took 
it  for  something  else?  Being  a  construction  of  the 
mind  (or  what  not)  one  would  expect  that  everyone 
^  from  the  first  would  take  it  as  such.  But  nobody  took 
it  in  that  way  till  you  came  on  the  scene.  Why  should 
the  human  mind  start  thus  on  the  wrong  road  when 
there  was  nothing  to  prevent  it  starting  on  the  right  ? 
What  Deceiver  thus  beguiled  us  ? 

"  Or  again.  If,  as  some  of  you  profess,  there  is  no 
Reality  but  Thought,  or  Process,  or  Experience,  what 
can  have  started  the  notion  common  to  all  plain  men 
that  there  are  many  realities  besides  Thought,  Process, 
or  Experience  ?  If  all  we  can  think  is  Thought,  then 
nobody  would  ever  have  been  able  to  think  of  some- 
thing else  which  isn't  Thought.  But  we  plain  men 
have  always  been  able  to  think  of  something  else  which 
isn't  Thought.  How  did  we  first  manage  to  do  that, 
and  how  do  we  manage  to  keep  it  up  or  carry  it  on  ? 
Who,  once  more,  is  the  Deceiver  ? 

"  Granted,  then,  that  our  error  is  great,  you  must 
admit  that  the  origin  of  such  an  error  is  extremely 
perplexing.  There  seems  no  reason  for  it.  It  appears 
to  us  that  if  your  interpretation  of  the  world  be  true, 


20  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

there  would  be  no  plain  men,  and  our  view  of  things 
could  never  have  arisen.  But  it  has  arisen.  The  Plain 
Man  with  all  his  errors  is  as  much  a  fact  as  anything 
else.  So  that,  were  he  to  accept  your  solution  of  other 
mysteries,  his  doing  so  would  involve  him  in  a  greater 
mystery  than  all  the  rest  which  you  have  removed — 
the  mystery,  namely,  of  his  own  appearance  on  a  scene 
where  he,  with  his  gratuitous  errors,  is  obviously 
superfluous. 

"  Then,  again,  you  can  hardly  fail  to  have  observed 
.  that  all  this  language  about  one  thing  'manifesting 
itself  as  something  else  is  a  sore  trouble  to  plain  men. 
We  can't  make  it  out ;  and  the  more  we  try  to  under- 
stand what  you  mean  the  more  you  bewilder  us.  For 
are  we  not  right  in  supposing  that  a  thing  can  manifest 
itself  only  by  coming  out  in  its  true  colours  ?  If  it 
comes  out  in  false  colours,  and  shows  itself  as  something 
other  than  it  is,  then  the  proper  name  for  the  process  is 
not  manifestation  but  masquerading,  or  (pardon  our 
plain  language)  lying.  Now,  broadly  speaking,  all 
things  are  liars,  as  thus  presented ;  they  wear  false 
colours. 

"  You  tell  us,  for  example,  that  the  Permanent  mani- 
fests itself  as  the  Changing,  the  Universal  as  the  Parti- 
cular, the  One  as  the  Many.  You  are  bold  enough, 
^  some  of  you,  to  affirm  that  Freedom  is  revealed  under 
the  form  of  Necessity.  Gentlemen,  forgive  a  plain  man 
for  expressing  his  conviction  that  this  kind  of  thing 
will  never  do.  We  are  sorely  puzzled  to  know  by  what 
right  you  call  this  'manifestation.'  We  are  given  a 
universe  in  which  everything  puts  on  the  mien  and 
livery  of  something  else  and  tries  to  pass  itself  off  as 
this  other  thing  whose  mien  it  has  copied  and  whose 


THE   BITTER  CRY   OF  THE   PLAIN   MAN         21 

clothes  it  has  stolen.  And  this  process  is  called  *  mani- 
festation.' It  is  impossible  for  us  to  accept  these 
*  manifestations '  and  at  the  same  time  retain  our  belief 
in  the  sanity  of  things.  Why  all  this  mendacity? 
What  end  does  it  serve?  May  we  assume  that  the 
universe  wants  us  to  understand  it  aright,  that  spirit 
is  averse  to  be  mistaken  for  flesh,  that  the  heavenly 
wishes  us  not  to  confuse  it  with  the  earthly?  Why, 
then,  should  the  heavenly  consistently  present  itself 
in  a  most  ingenious  earthly  disguise ;  why  should  spirit 
masquerade  as  flesh ;  why  should  a  *  construction 
of  mind '  put  on  the  air  of  a  rose-bush  ?  You  have 
assumed  that  the  universe  is  intelligible;  which  is  as 
much  as  to  say  that  things  deal  with  us  inteUigibly. 
But  in  the  universe  as  interpreted  by  you,  everything 
is  sailing  under  false  colours.  Nothing  deals  with  us 
intelligibly.  It  is  a  world  of  mistaken  identities,  so 
constructed  that  every  excuse  is  provided  for  mistaking 
them.  If  the  heavenly  always  appears  as  the  earthly, 
who  is  to  blame  for  denying  that  there  is  a  heavenly 
and  asserting  that  the  earthly  is  all  in  all  ?  If  the  One 
is  manifested  as  a  Many,  who  can  help  thinking  that  it 
is  Many  and  not  One  ?  If  the  spiritual  reveals  itself  as 
the  material,  then  the  spiritual  has  itself  to  blame  if  we 
take  it  at  its  own  valuation  and  accept  it  in  the  form  it 
has  chosen  to  assume.  Thus  we  are  introduced  to  what 
seems  a  mad  world.  Under  the  term  *  manifestation ' 
we  are  asked  to  accept  a  universal  system  of  disguise, 
impersonation,  and  masquerade,  which  is  not  only 
purposeless  but  opposed  to  the  purpose  we  cannot  help 
ascribing  to  an  intelligible  world — the  purpose,  namely, 
of  getting  itself  understood.  It  is  only  by  reversing 
our  supposition  and  ascribing  to  the  world  the  purpose 


22  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

of  getting  itself  misunderstood  that  we  are  able  to  see 
any  sense  in  these  arrangements.  If  the  One  wants  us 
to  mistake  its  nature,  how  could  it  effect  the  purpose 
better  than  by  appearing  as  the  Many  ? 

"  So,  then,  it  comes  to  this.  In  much  that  is  written 
about  Appearance  and  Reality  you  seem  to  us  plain 
men  to  be  engaged  not  so  much  in  solving  a  problem  as 
"^  in  unmasking  a  meaningless  fraud.  We  cannot  under- 
stand  why  Reality,  anxious  to  get  itself  recognised  for 
what  it  is,  should  adopt  the  method  of  presenting  itself 
as  the  Unreal.  Gentlemen,  the  situation  is  infinitely 
perplexing,  and  all  your  fine  words  cannot  make  it  any- 
thing else. 

"  We  were  taught  as  children  that  when  God  chose 
to  reveal  Himself  to  man  He  wrote  a  Book,  or  caused  a 
Book  to  be  written.  Whatever  we  may  think  of  this  now, 
one  is  bound  to  admit  that  here,  at  all  events,  the  word 
'revelation'  is  honestly  used.  Compare  the  strange 
performances  of  the  philosopher's  Absolute !  Being  Real 
it  reveals  itself  as  Phenomenal ;  being  out  of  Time  and 
Space  it  reveals  itself  as  in  Time  and  Space  ;  being 
Absolute  it  reveals  itself  as  Relative  ;  being  Spiritual  it 
reveals  itself  as  Material ;  being  One  it  reveals  itself  as 
Many.  But  then  the  philosophers  appear — and  every- 
thing is  set  right.  The  Absolute  having '  revealed '  itself 
as  what  it  is  not,  now  produces  the  philosopher  who,  by 
introducing  another  'not'  into  the  revelations,  brings 
them  back  to  the  original  truth.  The  Real  negates  itself, 
and  then  by  negating  the  negation  comes  once  more  to 
its  own.  Well,  there  is  no  accounting  for  tastes,  and 
if  this  is  how  the  Real  proclaims  its  reality  we  must  put 
up  with  it  as  best  we  can.  We  cannot  complain  that 
Reality  is  kept  under  lock  and  key,  but  may  be  thankful 


THE   BITTER   CRY   OF  THE   PLAIN   MAN         23 

that,  having  locked  itself  in  the  darkness,  it  thrusts  the 
key  under  the  door,  so  that  when  philosophers  come 
that  way  they  may  let  it  out  again  into  the  light. ^  But 
how  much  simpler  it  would  have  been  to  leave  the  door 
open  from  the  start ! 

"  This  Moment  of  Negation,  as  you  call  it,  is,  indeed, 
a  most  superfluous  moment  to  plain  men.  To  us  it 
appears  a  needless  pause  in  the  process  of  being,  a 
bewildering  back-eddy  in  the  process  of  thought, 
whereby  a  result  is  delayed  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
giving  a  certain  piquancy  to  its  arrival,  as  when  Jack 
jumps  out  of  his  box. 

**  We  often  wonder  if  you  have  realised  the  dreadful 
sinking  of  the  heart  which  is  produced  in  some  of  us 
when  we  stand  face  to  face  with  the  philosopher's 
Absolute  and  consider  its  ways.  Do  not  condemn  us 
too  harshly  if  we  make  our  confession  particularly  frank 
at  this  point.  Our  dominant  feeling  in  presence  of  this 
\^  Absolute  is  a  kind  of  regret  that  we  have  made  its 
acquaintance,  coupled  with  a  wish  that  the  Absolute 
were  other  than  it  is.  And  it  is  for  you  to  consider 
whether  you  can  claim  to  have  explained  Experience 
when  this  is  the  result  of  your  explanations.  When 
with  the  Moment  of  Negation,  or  what  not,  the  world  is 
made  to  rest  on  principles  which  no  Plain  Man  in  his 
senses  would  ever  dream  of  making  the  principles  of 
his  own  conduct,  when  you  have  left  him  in  the 
presence  of  something  so  bizarre  and  unintelligible  in 
its  intelligibility,  so  odd  and  weird  and  round-about 
and  perverse  in  its  mode  of  attaining  the  simplest 
objects,  that  he  can  only  stand  aghast — can  you,  I  say, 
on  these  conditions,  honestly  profess  to  have  explained 
1  See  the  quotations  from  Hegel's  Logic  on  p.  29. 


«4  THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

anything  to  that  man  ?  When  he  asks  you  to  explain 
his  experience,  he  hopes  that  the  result  of  your  labours 
will  make  him  feel  at  home  in  the  world.  What  is  thus 
given  him  makes  him  feel  not  at  home.  The  more 
thoroughly  he  agrees  with  you,  the  greater  becomes 
the  cleft  between  his  intelligence  and  the  rest  of  his 
life.  It  is  not  true  that  you  *  reconcile '  this  man 
either  with  himself  or  with  the  world.  You  put  him 
at  odds  with  the  world  and  with  himself.  You  make 
him  feel,  in  his  deeper  consciousness,  a  stranger  in  a 
strange  land. 

"  Consider  the  following  passage  written  by  a  dis- 
tinguished representative  of  your  order : 

" '  Negation  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  positive  substantive 
moment  in  the  objective  dialectic,  but  as  implicit  in  the  moment 
of  affirmation  or  "  determining-so  " — the  idea.  The  "  idea  '*"'  which 
seeks  to  fulfil  itself  as  "  end '"'  fulfils  itself  as  a  concrete,  we  said, 
in  terms  of  the  sense-categories,  and  as  fulfilled  it  is  "  determinate  *" 
or  "actual.'*''  It  is  in  the  moment  of  End,  fulfilled  as  a  phenomenal 
determinate,  that  the  positive  idea  as  essence  and  the  negation 
that  gives  individuality  meet.  Thus  we  say  that  the  individual 
is  a  synthesis  of  affirmation  or  idea  and  of  negation.  The  negation 
is  thus  a  constitutive  principle  contained  in  the  affirmation  and 
enters  into  the  method  of  the  universe ''  (Laurie,  Synthetica^  vol.  ii. 
p.  415). 

"Now,  gentlemen,  far  be  it  from  us  plain  men  to 
speak  slightingly  of  this  passage,  for  we  recognise  it  as 
earnest  and  pathetic.  Far  be  it  from  us  to  criticise  its 
statements  ;  for  we  scarcely  understand  what  they  mean. 
But  after  trying  our  best  to  understand  them  the  con- 
clusion we  come  to  is  this:  that  if  the  truths  most 
important  to  man  explain  themselves  in  this  manner, 
then  our  lot  in  this  world  is  dismal  in  the  extreme. 
The  Truth  which  requires  this  passage  for  its  expression. 


THE   BITTER   CRY  OF  THE   PLAIN   MAN         25 

whatever  that  Truth  may  be,  is  unlovely  and  not  to  be 
desired  by  the  heart  of  man.  That  is  how  we  feel  about 
the  matter.  That  is  our  emotional  reaction  as  we  close 
the  book.  We  do  not  pretend  to  be  logical ;  we  cannot 
justify  our  attitude  by  any  argument ;  but  neither  can 
we  help  or  overcome  the  unutterable  repugnance  with 
which  we  look  forth  on  a  world  which  hides  its  message 
from  us  under  the  garb  it  is  here  made  to  assume.  It  is 
not  that  we  are  afraid  of  hard  things.  As  plain  men 
we  meet  hardness,  and  endure  gainsaying,  and  stand 
up  to  opposition  every  hour.  But  this  is  worse  than 
hard ;  it  is  supremely  forbidding.  Nor  are  we  merely 
affrighted  from  want  of  courage,  like  men  whose  hearts 
fail  them  at  the  crossing  of  some  precarious  bridge 
thrown  over  the  boiling  waters  of  Death.  The  thing 
before  us,  though  intended  as  a  bridge,  would  serve 
better  as  a  trap,  for  it  is  so  contrived  that  whoever 
trusts  himself  to  its  support  must  inevitably  fall  in. 
Our  suspicions  are  aroused.  Were  the  truth  of  things 
friendly,  we  think  it  would  not  cloak  itself  in  this  dis- 
guise ;  were  it  desirous  to  get  itself  recognised,  as  friendly 
truth  assuredly  would  be,  it  would  not  stake  the  recogni- 
tion on  the  chance  of  our  being  able  to  rightly  emphasise 
each  several  word  in  such  a  passage  as  this.  It  appals 
us  to  think  we  are  living  in  a  world  which  opens  its 
mouth  in  parables  like  these.  Thus  addressed  we 
recoil,  we  shiver,  we  cry  out  in  alarm ;  our  blood 
turns  to  water.  And  the  world  we  once  welcomed, 
and  in  whose  presence  we  were  wont  to  rejoice  as 
before  a  living  thing,  seems  to  die  under  this  treat- 
ment of  it ;  and  it  dies  no  decent  death,  but  resents 
the  dying,  and  gnashes  its  teeth  at  the  slayer  and 
yields   up   the  ghost  with   convulsions  and  groans  of 


26        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

agony,  like  a  stricken  monster  twisting  and  splashing 
in  its  blood. 

"Is  it  beneath  you,  gentlemen,  to  attend  to  these 
by-products  of  your  work,  to  study  the  effect  of  your 
potions  not  only  on  some  isolated  nerve  of  the  intellect, 
but  as  affecting  the  vital  pulse  of  the  human  heart? 
Are  not  some  of  you  like  those  physicians  who  purchase 
\  the  relief  of  a  single  member  by  poisoning  the  whole 
man  ?  What  though  your  logic  dispels  for  a  moment 
some  local  doubt,  some  problem  on  the  periphery  of  the 
mind,  if  all  within  us  that  lives,  not  by  the  chopped 
straw  of  logic,  but  by  God's  light  and  air,  sickens  under 
the  drug  and  dies  ? 

"Doubtless  some  of  you  will  say  that  in  all  this 
bitter  cry  we  have  revealed  ourselves  not  as  good 
specimens  of  the  Plain  Man  but  as  bad  specimens  of 
the  philosopher.  Our  difficulties  proceed  from  our  mis- 
understanding of  your  doctrine  and  from  our  attempts 
to  meddle  with  things  beyond  our  powers.  The  Plain 
Man,  you  will  add,  is  a  very  worthy  fellow ;  but  the 
Plain  Man  who  dabbles  in  philosophy  is  a  hopeless  fool. 
So  be  it.  But  remember,  gentlemen,  that  in  the  last 
resort  you,  as  well  as  ourselves,  are  plain  men.  May 
we  not,  then,  ask  you  to  study,  more  thoroughly  than 
you  have  yet  done,  the  reaction  on  our  mind  of  the 
teaching  you  are  continually  offering  to  those  of  us 
who  cannot  forget  our  plainness  ?  Or  is  philosophy  by 
its  very  nature  a  mission  to  the  converted  ?  Are  you 
content  to  address  your  brother  professors  in  the  pages 
of  Mind  ?  Is  your  calling  esoteric  ?  We  are  sure  that 
you  will  answer  these  questions  in  the  negative.  You 
cannot  leave  us  altogether  out  of  the  account.  Be- 
nighted as  we  are,  you  yet  desire  that  we,  as  occasion 


THE   BITTER  CRY   OF   THE   PLAIN   MAN  27 

permits,  shall  look  into  what  you  are  doing  and  try  to 
pick  up  a  crumb  here  and  a  crumb  there.  Well,  all  we 
ask  of  you  is  that  you  should  hear  our  story.  We 
only  beg  to  tell  you  how  the  crumb  tastes  which  we 
have  picked  up.     And  we  say  it  tastes  bitter. 

"  Gentlemen,  you  are  the  helpers  of  the  world  ;  you 
prepare  the  harvests  which  feed  mankind.  Plough  not 
the  hungry  sand,  we  beseech  you.  Give  us  bread,  not 
husks,  to  eat,  and  we  will  come  to  your  tables.  Cleanse 
your  threshing-floors  from  the  chaff  of  past  harvests. 
And  look  to  your  storehouses,  for  there  is  famine  in 
the  land." 


IL— ART   AND   EXPERIENCE 

Whatever  philosophical  "  attitude "  or  point  of  view 
the  mind  may  take  in  regard  to  the  world,  whether 
that  of  the  Monist  or  the  Pluralist,  will  be  found  to 
y  involve  that  the  world,  on  its  part,  has  an  answering 
"attitude"  towards  the  mind.  It  is  always  well  to 
remember  this  reciprocity  and  to  ask  ourselves,  when 
our  own  "attitude"  is  taken,  what  corresponds  or 
answers  to  this  from  the  side  of  the  world.  Are  they 
the  same  or  different  ?  Is  the  world  indifferent  in  the 
matter,  in  the  sense  that  a  lump  of  iron  is  indifferent 
while  a  metallurgist  is  expounding  its  properties ;  or  is 
it  an  intelligent  accomplice,  a  sympathetic  partner, 
aiding  and  abetting  the  mind's  efforts  to  understand 
its  structure  and  to  define  its  laws? 

It  will  probably  be  admitted  that  the  world-process 
as  expounded  by  the  idealists,  and  notably  by  Hegel,  is 
something  more  than  the  corpus  vile  of  a  philosophi- 
cal process.  It  cannot  be  treated  as  indifferent  to  its 
own  interpretation.  It  has  an  interest  in  the  result, 
and  is  an  active  accomplice  in  the  production  of  the 
Idealist  Cosmology.  Its  "attitude"  in  the  matter  is 
analogous  to  that  of  a  person  who  has  a  meaning  to 
impart  to  others  and  is  taking  the  necessary  steps  to 
get  his  meaning  recognised.  Using  plain  language, 
we  may  say  that  the  Hegelian  universe  wants  to   be 

28 


UNIVERSITY  )) 

OF  JJ 

;AL,ron2^>^RT   AND   EXPERIENCE  29 

understood  as  a  consistent  or  rational  whole.  It 
makes  no  difference  whether  it  would  so  comprehend 
itself  or  be  so  comprehended  by  another.  It  tries  to 
make  itself  known  in  its  true  character.  Indeed,  the 
Hegelian  dialectic  is  meaningless  unless  we  assume  the 
world  to  be  controlled  by  a  purpose — the  purpose  being 
to  attain  that  reflection,  recognition,  or  knowledge  of 
its  own  process  which  constitutes  the  Hegelian  insight 
or  consciousness.  When  the  Hegelian  consciousness 
appears  the  goal  is  reached,  the  end  is  fulfilled,  and  the 
world  may  be  imagined  to  say,  for  the  moment  at  least, 
"  actum  est."  On  our  side  there  is  the  satisfaction  that 
we  have  solved  the  riddle  of  the  universe ;  from  the  side 
of  the  universe  this  means  the  satisfaction  of  having, 
in  our  success,  accomplished  its  own  design,  by  making 
itself  intelligible,  by  getting  its  process  recognised  for 
what  it  truly  is. 

The  purpose  of  the  world,  then,  being  to  attain  con- 
sciousness of  itself  as  a  rational  or  consistent  whole,  is  it 
not  a  little  strange  that  the  first  step,  so  to  speak,  taken 
by  the  world  for  the  attainment  of  this  end  is  that  of 
presenting  itself  in  the  form  of  contradictory  experience  ? 
"  In  the  course  of  its  process,"  says  Hegel,  *'  the  Idea 
makes  itself  that  illusion,  by  setting  an  antithesis  to 
confront  it,  and  its  action  consists  in  getting  rid  of  the 
illusion  which  it  has  created."^  And  elsewhere:  "  The 
true  knowledge  of  God  begins  when  we  know  that 
things  as  they  immediately  are  have  no  truth."  ^  Re- 
curring, now,  to  our  analogy  of  a  person  who  desires 
us  to  recognise  his  consistency,  would  it   not  greatly 

^  Lo^Cy   tr.    Wallace,   p.    181.      Quoted   by   James,    A    Pluralistic 
Universe  J  p.  51. 
2  Ihid.,  p.  304. 


30  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

surprise  us  if  the  person  in  question  began  the  process 
by  presenting  himself  as  inconsistent  or  by  delivering  an 
illusory  account  of  his  own  character  ?  So  long  as  we 
think  of  the  world,  or  of  this  person,  as  indifferent  to 
whether  we  understand  him  or  no,  the  fact  that  he  ad- 
dresses us  by  way  of  contradiction  or  illusion  will  create 
no  surprise  ;  but  the  moment  we  remember  that  he  wants 
us  to  understand  him,  that  he  is  trying  to  make  himself 
known,  that  this  is  the  purpose  of  his  communications, 
the  strangeness  of  the  proceeding  will  start  into  view. 
There  is  certainly  something  piquant  in  this  mode  of 
revealing  consistency ;  and  if  piquancy  is  the  object, 
well  and  good  ;  but  short  of  this  the  method  of  "  revela- 
tion by  puzzle  "  is  extremely  bizarre  and  very  difficult 
to  take  seriously. 

To  make  this  clear  let  us  reverse  the  supposition 
by  crediting  the  world  with  the  purpose  of  concealing 
its  consistency  or  of  leading  on  to  the  belief  that  it  is 
not  a  rational  whole,  or  of  creating  that  "  pluralistic  " 
consciousness  of  itself  which  turns  up,  for  example,  in 
Professor  William  James.  What  mode  of  address 
would  such  a  world  adopt  ?  Under  what  form  of  ex- 
perience would  it  present  itself  to  the  mind  ?  Can  we 
hesitate  to  answer  that  a  contradictory  form  of  experi- 
ence would  be  admirably  adapted  for  the  purpose  ?  In 
short,  from  a  world  bent  on  baffling  our  quest  for  unity, 
should  we  not  expect  just  such  an  endless  series  of 
antinomies  as  we  actually  find  in  the  life  of  Pure 
Reason  ? 

We  shall  be  told,  of  course,  that  our  minds  seek 
unity  and  cannot  rest  in  anything  else.  But  we  are 
now  looking  at  the  matter  not  from  our  point  of  view, 
but  from  that  of  the  world  ;  we  are  asking  not  what  we 


ART   AND   EXPERIENCE  81 

seek,  but  what  the  world  seeks  ;  we  are  considering  how 
the  world  would  proceed  on  the  assumption  that  it 
wants  us  to  recognise  it  as  this  or  that.  And  we  affirm 
that  the  admitted  contradictions  of  experience  are 
exactly  what  one  would  expect  from  a  world  which 
desired  us  to  rest  in  the  Many  rather  than  the  One. 
On  the  one  hand,  it  may  be  true  that  if  we  want  unity 
we  can  get  it  only  by  solving  contradictions,  and  that 
therefore  a  contradictory  experience  must  be  provided 
for  the  purpose ;  on  the  other  hand,  a  contradictory 
experience  is  exactly  what  would  be  provided  by  a 
world  whose  attitude  is  supposed  to  be  hostile,  or 
indifferent,  to  those  efforts  after  unity  which  the  mind 
is  making. 

For  ourselves  we  are  equally  averse  to  the  adoption 
of  either  hypothesis.  Admitting,  as  we  do,  the  contra- 
dictions of  experience ;  admitting  also  that  metaphysic 
arises  in  the  attempt  to  solve  them,  we  are  yet  unable 
to  see  in  the  world-process  any  design,  intention,  or 
deliberate  challenge  in  virtue  of  which  we  are  bound  to 
make  that  attempt.  Nor  are  we  sure,  in  spite  of  some 
prima  facie  likelihood,  that  the  universe  intends  us  to 
leave  its  contradictions  alone.  We  can  only  say,  and 
we  say  it  with  some  confidence,  that  either  course 
derives  an  equal  warrant  from  the  facts.  So  far  as  the 
intentions  of  the  world-process  are  manifest,  there  is  no 
condemnation  for  the  man  who  refuses  to  regard  the 
solution  of  the  world's  antinomies  as  the  primary  busi- 
ness of  his  mind.  We  infer  that  the  world-process  is 
quite  content  with  that  man  who  finds  for  himself  forms 
of  commerce  with  Reality  other  than  that  which  consists 
in  solving  the  intellectual  contradictions  of  experience. 
Though  we  fully  concede  that  a  world-process   which 


>^ 


\ 


32        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

aimed  at  the  reconciliation  of  opposites  would  have  to 
provide  us  with  opposites  to  reconcile,  yet  we  are  by  no 
means  willing  to  convert  this  proposition  by  affirming 
that  the  actual  provision  of  the  opposites  proves  their 
reconciliation  to  be  the  aim  of  the  world -process.  This 
illegitimate  conversion  appears  to  us  to  vitiate  some 
conclusions  of  the  Hegelian  Logic.  The  actual  existence 
of  contradictions  in  experience — which  of  course  is  not 
denied — is  a  fact  of  doubtful  meaning ;  it  is  compatible 
with  more  than  one  hypothesis.  To  read  it  as  a  challenge 
enforcing  the  quest  for  unity  upon  every  reasonable 
being,  to  read  it  as  this  and  this  only,  is  dogmatism. 
It  may  be  read,  with  equal  justice,  in  other  ways. 
Thus  we  are  prepared  to  say,  for  example,  that  the  con- 
tradictions of  experience,  far  from  tying  us  down  to  the 
solitary  task  of  their  solution,  may  be  read  as  an  elo- 
quent hint  warning  us  not  to  make  the  quest  for  unity 
the  exclusive  business  of  the  mind.  The  metaphysician 
must  not  be  too  hasty  in  claiming  the  whole  universe  as 
his  and  no  other's.  After  all,  his  *'  licence  to  trade  "  ex- 
tends no  further  than  the  province  of  the  metaphysical 
purpose,  which  is  by  no  means  co-extensive  with  the 
whole  field  of  self-conscious  life.  He  is  a  little  too  apt  to 
assume  that  the  appeal  of  experience  is  exclusively  for 
that  kind  of  response  which  metaphysical  science  alone 
can  give — an  appeal,  namely,  for  "  explanation  "  or  even 
for  "reconciliation."  It  is  certain,  for  example,  that 
a  work  of  art  does  not  ask  us  primarily  to  **  explain  "  it. 
And  the  philosopher  will  find  the  question  well  worth 
asking,  whether  the  world  does  not,  in  this  respect, 
resemble  a  work  of  art.  To  this  question  we  address 
ourselves  in  the  following  essay. 


ART  AND   EXPERIENCE  38 


So  far  as  the  world  is  treated  as  an  object  of  discus- 
sion we  are  bound  to  assume  its  rationality.  No  object 
can  stand  before  the  bar  of  thought  and  maintain  the 
character  of  an  unknowable.  Were  the  object  unknow- 
able, thought  could  not  apprehend  it,  could  not  single 
it  out  from  other  objects  as  the  one  to  be  examined, 
^  could  not  summon  it  into  court  to  receive  judgment. 
Whatever  else  Reality  may  be,  it  cannot  be  unknowable 
so  long  as  we  are  able  to  call  it  up  for  discussion 
and  to  assure  ourselves  that  we  have,  so  to  speak, 
"  caught  the  right  man," — that  the  object  before  us  is 
Reality  and  not  the  unreal.  It  is  futile  to  discuss  the 
nature  of  ultimates  on  any  other  basis,  or  in  the  hope 
of  reaching  any  other  conclusion.  Were  we  fully  in- 
structed in  the  secret  workings  of  our  own  thought  we 
should  probably  discover  that  some  of  the  ultimate 
conceptions  we  are  dealing  with  have  been  constructed 
by  the  intelligence  for  its  own  purpose,  the  process  of 
"understanding"  them  being  no  more  than  a  taking 
to  pieces  by  the  mind  of  what  the  mind  has  already 
put  together.  Be  that  as  it  may,  there  is  no  going 
back  from  the  rationality  of  a  world  whose  nature  we 
have  undertaken  to  discuss.  The  undertaking  itself 
is  impossible  on  any  other  terms.  As  one  cannot  eat 
what  is  uneatable  nor  drink  what  is  undrinkable,  so  he 
cannot  discuss  what  is  not  discussible  nor  assign  reason- 
able limits  to  the  absurd. 

All  this  is  a  truism,  but  a  truism  which  is  constantly 
being  forgotten  and  needing  to  be  revived.  Neverthe- 
less its  application  is  limited ;  and  it  has  become  a 
source   of    error  in  the   work   of  thinkers   who   have 


y 


/ 


34        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

pressed  it  beyond  its  limits  and  put  upon  it   a  strain 
that  it  will  not  bear. 

Were  our  commerce  with  the  world  limited  to  the 
task  of  discussing  its  ultimate  nature,  then  the  assump- 
tion of  its  rationality  would  be  the  only  assumption  we 
should  require ;  to  that  we  should  attend  and  to  that 
alone.  But  our  commerce  with  the  world  is  of  infinite 
variety ;  discussion  of  its  nature  is  no  more  than  one  of 
a  vast  multitude  of  tasks  which  life  lays  on  us  ;  and  the 
warrant  of  rationality,  so  indispensable  in  the  sphere 
to  which  it  belongs,  does  not  run  beyond. 

A  being,  or  race  of  beings,  with  no  object  in  life  save 
that  of  moving  more  or  less  rapidly  through  space  and 
transporting  objects  from  one  position  to  another,  would 
find  in  the  assumption  of  universal  mechanism  all  he 
required  to  attain  his  purpose.  A  mechanical  universe 
would  be  all  he  would  want,  and  all  he  would  find. 
Or  if  we  imagine  a  type  of  consciousness  exclusively 
occupied  in  the  enjoyment  of  those  emotional  raptures 
when  thought  is  said  to  expire,  the  assumption  of 
rationality  would  never  so  much  as  come  within  its 
ken,  and  would  be  as  unnecessary  as  it  was  unknown. 
That  assumption  is  needed,  and  needed  only,  by  that 
man  who,  in  addition  to  the  other  tasks  with  which 
Nature  or  choice  has  provided  him,  takes  upon  himself 
the  burden  of  understanding  the  world.  Nor  can  we 
conceive  of  any  dogmatism  more  narrow  or  more 
groundless  than  that  which  seeks  to  make  its  own  parti- 
cular presupposition  the  sole  basis  of  a  self-conscious 
life.  It  would  seem  rather  that  the  world  is  rich  enough 
in  its  resources,  not  only  to  provide  an  infinite  number  of 
presuppositions  other  than  this,  suited  to  every  variety  of 
human  purpose,  but  also  to  make  room  for  the  life  which 


ART  AND   EXPERIENCE  35 

needs  no  conscious  presupposition  at  all.  Nor  are 
these  forms  of  living,  each  with  or  without  its  appro- 
priate assumption,  distributed  among  an  equal  number 
of  individuals,  one  for  you,  another  for  him,  a  third  for 
me.  The  same  individual  must  live  through  many; 
and  as  he  changes  from  this  to  that,  so  must  the  pre- 
supposition change  on  which  he  bases  his  life.  The 
only  man  whom  the  world  refuses  to  gratify  with  all 
the  presuppositions  he  needs  is  fortunately  a  type  which 
exists  only  in  books — the  abstract  man  who  sets  up 
the  assumption  of  his  own  calling  as  the  standard  of 
intelligent  life  for  everybody.  For  him — or  for  us  (for 
who  is  wholly  guiltless  ?) — there  is  no  mercy.  If  we  try 
to  live  exclusively  in  the  light  of  any  single  presup- 
position, the  world  will  assuredly  break  us. 

A  person  who  takes  up  the  study  of  Philosophy  is  in 
perpetual  danger  of  regarding  himself  as  a  being  endowed 

^  with  a  purely  theoretical  consciousness.  And  the  life 
whose  mysteries  he  would  pierce,  or  the  universe 
whose  secret  he  would  discover,  is  apt  to  become, 
in  its  turn,  something  with  a  purely  theoretical  signifi- 

-^  cance.  For  himself,  the  student  thinks,  there  will  be 
no  rest  till  his  theoretical  consciousness  is  in  possession 
of  the  theoretical  secret.  And  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that,  within  the  limits  thus  artificially  laid  down, 
he  is  right.  As  a  mere  student  of  cosmology  or 
anthropology  nothing  but  a  solution  of  the  world- 
riddle,  nothing  but  a  formula  of  life,  will  suit  his  pur- 
pose. But  suppose  these  things  attained — what  then  ? 
The  only  purpose  they  serve  is  the  purpose  of  a 
mind  which,  as  we  have  said,  regards  itself  as  en- 
dowed  for   the   time   being  with  a  purely  theoretical 


\ 


36  THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

consciousness.     As   a  mere  student  of  philosophy,  i.e. 
as  an  abstraction,  his  life-formulas  may  satisfy  him  ;  but 

\  they  will  not  satisfy  him  as  a  7?ian,  which  is  as  much 
as  to  say  that  they  will  not  satisfy  kirn  at  all.  No 
doubt  he  has  tried  an  important  experiment,  and  it 
will  not  be  without  influence  on  the  very  different, 
but  equally  important,  experiments  which  other  men 
are  trying  in  other  spheres.     The  problem  he  has  set 

A^  himself  to  solve  is  this :  ''  What  can  be  made  of  the 
world  when  taken  as  an  object  of  theoretic  study?" 
ignoring  for  the  time  being  that  the  world  is  infinitely 
more  than  this.  Life,  for  him,  shall  be  as  a  field  in 
which  questions  are  sown  and  answers  raised,  and  he 
will  find  out  what  will  grow,  he  will  try  his  hand  at 
raising  a  crop.  This  is  the  experiment,  but  it  decides 
nothing  outside  the  sphere  to  which  it  belongs.  As  the 
farmer  tries  what  he  can  make  of  the  world  for  growing 
wheat,  the  financier  for  making  money,  so  the  philo- 
sopher tries  it  as  a  field  for  raising  systems  of  thought. 
And  all  these  are  necessary ;  and  the  work  of  each  inter- 
penetrates the  work  of  the  others.  But  none  of  them 
is  all-inclusive.  The  farmer's  experiments  do  not  solve 
the  problems  of  the  philosopher.  But  neither  do  the 
philosopher's  solve  the  farmer's.  Philosophy  will 
bake  no  man's  bread — Hegel  himself  has  told  us  so. 
And  yet  bread  has  to  be  baked,  as  well  as  the  world- 
problem  solved. 

No  man  either  is  or  can  be  a  mere  philosopher. 
This,  of  course,  nobody  will  deny.  But  the  correlate 
is  more  easily  overlooked — namely,  that  the  world,  on 
its  side,  is  no  mere  philosopher's  world,  try  as  we 
will  to  make  it  such.  In  his  own  personality  the 
philosopher  combines  many  characters  which  he  may 


ART  AND  EXPERIENCE  37 

distinguish  but  cannot  separate ;  lives  many  lives 
besides  that  whose  business  is  to  solve  the  riddles  of 
the  universe.  He  too  must  plant  and  sow,  must 
earn  his  living,  eat  and  drink,  marry  and  give  in 
marriage.  He  is  farmer,  financier,  lover,  animal,  and 
philosopher  all  in  one.  And  each  of  these  functions 
has  its  own  "  presuppositions  " ;  all  of  which  have  the 
same  right  to  be  considered  valid  and  indispensable 
for  the  purposes  they  severally  serve.  Regarding  him- 
self as  a  mere  theoretic  consciousness,  and  arming 
himself  only  with  such  doctrines  as  are  suitable  to 
that  character,  the  philosopher  can  neither  till  the 
land,  nor  earn  his  living,  nor  love  his  wife  and 
children.  As  thinker,  it  is  true,  he  cannot  think 
without  assuming  the  intelligibility  of  the  object 
of  thought ;  but  as  lover  he  must  assume  much  more 
than  this,  or  the  beloved  will  never  be  won.  To  say, 
as  may  be  truly  said,  that  you  cannot  think  about 
an  unintelligible  universe  may  be  matched  by  saying 
that  you  cannot  marry  the  Pons  Asinorum.  The 
assumption  of  intelligibility  for  intelligence,  and  of 
something  else  for  love,  stand  on  precisely  the  same 
footing — and  so  with  all  the  rest.  None  of  these  can 
oust  the  others  and  set  up  a  claim  to  be  the  sole,  or  the 
ultimate,  formula  of  life.  The  philosopher  must  make 
one  when  he  thinks ;  but  with  equal  inevitableness  he 
must  make  another,  or  many  others,  when  he  falls  in 
love.  To  the  mere  thinker,  if  there  were  such  a  being, 
the  rationality  of  the  universe  would  be  the  central,  the 
all-important,  nay,  the  only  truth  ;  and  to  the  mere  lover, 
in  the  same  sense,  the  presence  of  his  mistress  would  be 
the  central,  the  all-important,  the  only  fact. 

And  just  as  the   student  of  philosophy   is   always 


38  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

in  danger  of  regarding  himself  as  a  mere  theoretic 
consciousness,  and  reducing  the  presuppositions  of  his 
many-sided  life  to  the  single  form  his  theoretic  con- 
sciousness demands,  so  we  may  say  of  every  man  that 
he  is  in  danger  of  imposing  his  own  life-purpose  on  the 
world.  Indeed,  philosophy  is  perhaps  the  only  calling 
in  which  this  danger  is  not  recognised  for  what  it  is. 
When  we  encounter  it  in  any  other  walk  of  life  we 
know  what  we  have  to  deal  with.  We  call  it  bias ; 
we  amuse  ourselves  at  its  expense,  for  is  it  not  the 
usual  form  in  which  men  make  themselves  ridiculous  ? 
An  auctioneer  who  had  been  to  Iceland  was  asked  to 
give  his  impressions.  "  I  assure  you,  sir,"  he  replied, 
\  "that  the  'ole  country,  if  put  under  my  'ammer, 
wouldn't  fetch  a  'alfpenny."  Now  this,  to  the 
auctioneer  -  consciousness,  is  "  a  fundamental  char- 
acterisation "  of  Iceland.  If  one  had  no  business  with 
Iceland  save  that  of  selling  it,  then  the  sole  presupposi- 
tion of  our  dealings  with  that  island  would  be  that  it 
was  saleable,  that  it  would  fetch  something,  and  the 
only  question  to  decide  would  be,  ''how  much  will  it 
-   fetch?" 

If  it  may  be  said  without  irreverence,  we  are  inclined 
to  think  that  too  much  of  our  philosophical  literature 
is  pitched  in  the  same  key  as  the  auctioneer's  remark. 
The  assumption  too  often  is  that  we  have  nothing  to 
do  with  the  universe  save  to  understand  it,  just  as  our 
auctioneer  conceived  himself  as  having  nothing  to  do 
with  Iceland  for  the  time  being  save  to  put  it  under 
his  hammer.  Proceeding  from  this  assumption,  the 
thinker  describes  the  universe  as  though  it  were  a  mere 
object  of  thought,  and  informs  us  that  it  is  a  rational 
whole.     But  in  all  this  he  is  apt  to  ignore  that  our 


\ 


ART  AND   EXPERIENCE  39 

dealings  with  the  world  consist  only  in  part  of  thinking 
about  its  ultimate  nature,  and  that  our  demands  on 
experience  go  far  beyond  the  desire  to  satisfy  ourselves 
of  its  rationality.  As  rational  merely  the  world  does 
not  respond  to  the  satisfaction  of  self-conscious  life, 
and  it  is  mere  professional  prejudice  to  pretend  that  it 
does.  As  the  wheels  of  experience  revolve  there  is 
one  point  in  the  circle,  and  one  point  only,  at  which 
the  truth  of  rationality  arrests  us ;  and  that  point  on 
the  circumference,  though  related  to  all  the  others, 
must  not  be  made  to  do  duty  for  the  whole  circle. 
As  we  pass  on  to  the  other  points  we  find  ourselves 
asking  more  of  experience  than  an  answer  to  rational 
questions ;  we  are  seeking  a  response  which  can  only 
be  given  in  terms  of  feeling,  action,  love,  and  never 
in  terms  of  rationality  alone.  Hence  we  may  refuse 
point-blank  to  treat  experience  as  a  mere  subject  of 
discussion.^  Nor  need  we  measure  the  valice  of  any- 
thing by  the  sole  test  of  its  intelligibility.  There  is 
no  direct  proportion  that  we  can  find  between  the 
worth  of  things  and  our  powers  of  explaining  them  or 
accounting  for  their  existence.  The  world  may  be  very 
dear  to  us  or  very  terrible  even  in  those  moments  when 
we  are  least  conscious  of  what  it  is  or  what  it  means, 
and  least  desirous  of  knowing.  There  are  at  least  some 
objects  in  the  world  of  which  this  may  be  said  without 
hesitation — namely,  works  of  art. 

1  Nowhere  is  this  emphasised  with  greater  force  than  in  what 
WilHam  James  called  the  "  vision  "  of  Hegel.  See,  for  example,  the 
preface  to  his  Philosophy  of  Right,  with  the  famous  passage  about  the 
owl  of  Minerva.  Unfortunately,  as  it  seems  to  the  present  writer, 
the  Dialectic  of  Hegel  leads,  not  to  the  "  vision  "  but  in  the  opposite 
direction. 


40  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

II 

Treated  as  the  object  of  a  theory  the  world  can  never 
rise  to  the  greater  dignity  of  a  work  of  art.  It  is  and 
must  remain  a  work  of  science,  i.e.  an  object  which  can 
be  exhaustively  interpreted  in  rational  terms.  In  this 
respect  there  is  no  difference  of  principle  between 
thinkers  who  take  a  strictly  mechanical  view  of  the 
universe  and  those,  on  the  other  hand,  who,  while  op- 
posed to  mere  mechanism,  would  lay  experience  under 
formulas  of  another  kind.  So  long  as  experience  is 
treated  as  subject  to  categories,  and  so  long  as  these 
categories  are  stated  exhaustively  and  in  rigid  form, 
the  distinction  between  "  mechanical "  and  "  spiritual  " 
does  not  fundamentally  affect  the  resultant  type  of 
thought.  In  either  case  the  world  comes  out  as  a  work 
of  science.  Mere  differences  of  terminology  must  not  be 
suffered  to  mislead  us.  The  substitution  of  "  process  " 
for  "  motion,"  or  of  "  growth  "  for  "  change,"  the  addi- 
tion of  the  adjective  "  spiritual "  to  any  of  the  nouns 
used  in  this  connection,  may  make  important  differences 
of  another  kind ;  but  these  changes  of  phrase  leave 
the  world  with  an  essentially  scientific  structure  and 
present  us  in  the  long-run  with  a  system  of  the  universe 
as  rigidly  determined  as  any  mechanical  system  could 
be.  Hegel,  for  instance,  is  reported  to  have  revealed 
the  Dynamics  of  Spirit;  but,  though  something  is  gained 
by  substituting  Dynamics  for  Statics,  Hegel's  thought, 
just  because  it  is  a  rigid  system,  is  no  more  commen- 
surate with  Life,  which  is  not  a  rigid  system,  than  any 
other  that  might  be  named.  The  rigidity  of  the 
Hegelian  Dialectic  is  apt  to  be  disguised  by  the  cir- 
cumstance that  it  is  expressed  throughout  in  a  Jiuid 


ART   AND   EXPERIENCE  41 

terminology,  of  which  the  word  "  Dialectic  "  itself  may 
be  taken  as  the  chief  example.  But,  while  refusing 
to  join  in  the  now  popular  outcry  against  Hegel,  who 
like  all  great  thinkers  builded  better  than  he  knew, 
we  find  ourselves  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  a 
''system"  of  fluid  terms  is  itself  a  more  perplexing 
contradiction  than  any  of  those  it  is  employed  to  solve. 
The  terms  become  equivocal  under  the  use  that  is 
made  of  them :  to  get  their  meaning  they  must  wait 
upon  the  process  they  profess  to  define.  So  far  as  the 
thinking  is  systematic  the  terms  lose  their  fluidity. 
When  the  terms  are  fluid,  the  thinking  ceases  to  be 
systematic.  Not  even  Hegel  can  have  it  both  ways 
at  once.  In  a  certain  sense,  therefore,  and  yet  an 
important  sense,  Hegel's  thought  is  as  mechanical  as 
that  avowedly  "mechanical"  Philosophy  which  it  is 
commonly  supposed  to  refute.  Just  as  Newton  laid  down 
laws  of  motion  for  a  world  conceived  as  made  up  of  mov- 
ing masses,  so  Hegel's  Dialectic  may  be  described  as  the 
Law  of  Motion  in  a  world  conceived  as  the  progressive 
Manifestation  of  Idea.  What  is  accomplished  in  the 
long-run  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  a  rigid  statement 
of  the  way  something  works,  or  grows  or  becomes. 
What  this  something  may  be,  matter  or  spirit,  here 
concerns  us  not ;  enough  that  it  "  works  "  in  the  way 
assigned  and  cannot  work  otherwise.  From  this 
circumstance  alone  it  results  that  the  world  of  Hegelian 
Philosophy  is  a  thinker's  world  ;  adjusted  from  the  first  to 
meet  the  demands  of  Pure  Reason.  And  no  thinker 
has  ever  attacked  that  world  with  greater  thoroughness. 
Hegel  seems  to  have  completely  disentangled,  or  pre- 
cipitated, the  thought-element  of  experience ;  he  may 
be  said  to  have  exhausted  that  aspect  of  Being,  at  least 


42  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

in  principle,  thereby  accomplishing  the  work  of  philo- 
sophy along  that  particular  line.  But  the  very 
completeness  of  his  work  only  serves  to  bring  out  its 
insufficiency  to  meet  the  total  demands  of  our  nature. 
So  long  as  something  remains  yet  to  be  done  in 
showing  what  thought  can  make  of  life,  we  may 
cherish  hope  that  complete  satisfaction  would  arise 
from  the  result.  But  when  the  result  appears,  as  it 
seems  to  appear  in  Hegel,  we  realise  at  once  that 
the  satisfaction  extends  no  further  than  the  original 
purpose  which  inspired  the  work.  It  may  satisfy 
thought,  but  it  satisfies  nothing  else.  Thinkers  as  we 
\  all  may  be,  we  are  yet  so  much  more  than  thinkers  that 
to  "  rest "  in  a  rigid  system  which  solves  all  problems  is 
as  impossible  as  it  would  be  to  "rest"  in  one  which 
left  half  our  problems  unsolved.  Abandoned  by  Hegel 
in  a  world  which,  after  all,  resembles  so  many  others  in 
being  a  work  of  science,  a  thinker's  world,  we  can  only 
cry,  "  This  is  not  the  world  in  which  we  live.  We  have 
other  business  in  hand  than  to  reconcile  opposites  and 
effect  a  synthesis  of  all  contradictions." 

There  is,  however,  an  earlier  thinker  whose  writings 
seem  to  me,  in  spite  of  the  current  opinion  to  the  con- 
trary, to  represent  a  much  richer  philosophical  experience 
than  can  be  ascribed  to  Hegel.     I  refer  to  Spinoza. 

According  to  Spinoza,  Substance,  or,  as  we  should 
now  say.  Reality,  enters  into  experience  under  a  double 
^  character — as  extended,  and  as  thinking.  How  these 
two  aspects  of  Being  are  related  to  one  another,  with 
many  other  similar  questions  familiar  enough  in  this 
connection,  need  not  detain  us  here.  Enough  if  we  note 
the  following  points. 


ART  AND  EXPERIENCE  43 

1.  In  allowing  Reality  to  enter  experience  under  a 
twofold  character,  Spinoza  stands  apart  from  all  those 
thinkers  who  would  reduce  experience  to  a  single 
formula,  or  even  to  formulae  of  a  single  type.  We 
have  here  the  beginnings  of  Pluralism,  the  plural  being 
represented  by  the  modest  number  "two."  Critics  of 
Spinoza  have  indeed  pointed  out,  with  much  truth,  that 
he  fails  to  maintain  the  strict  parallelism  of  the  two 
attributes,  that  the  rights  of  the  one  are  frequently 
merged,  or  taken  up,  in  the  rights  of  the  other ;  but  we 
can  hardly  doubt  that  by  representing  them  as  parallel  he 
wishes  us  to  understand  that,  though  matched,  they  are 
otherwise  independent,  that  each  speaks  a  language  of 
its  own,  that  extension  cannot  be  explained  by  thought, 
nor  thought  by  extension.  Hereby  Spinoza  would 
do  full  and  equal  justice  to  the  mechanical  and  the 
spiritual  aspects  of  the  universe ;  and  however  he  may 
stumble  or  fail  in  the  accomplishment  of  this  design, 
we  must  admit  that  the  design,  so  far  as  it  goes,  reveals 
in  this  philosopher  a  catholicity  of  outlook  and  an  effort 
to  do  justice  to  both  sides  of  the  question,  for  which 
we  look  in  vain  in  some  of  his  successors.  It  is  rather 
by  the  irony  of  history  than  by  his  own  intending 
that  Spinoza  has  come  to  rank  as  the  prophet  of  a 
**  block  universe  "  with  a  fixed  unitary  formula.  In  the 
whole  literature  of  philosophy  we  know  of  nothing  more 
genuinely  catholic  than  the  "  Definition  "  of  Substance 
with  which  the  Ethic  opens ;  of  nothing  better  fitted 
to  stand  as  the  mind's  charter  of  liberation  from  all 
attempts  to  tie  it  down  to  a  single  view  of  the  world. 
For  that  "Definition,"  rightly  understood,  simply 
declares  that  the  world  cannot  be  defined  or  circum- 
scribed   by    any   view   or    formula   whatsoever ;    that 


44  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

nothing  less  than  the  universe  is  adequate  to  the 
explanation  of  the  universe ;  that  Reality,  therefore, 
must  be  left  to  tell  its  own  story  in  its  own  ways. 

2.  On  the  other  hand,  by  limiting,  or  seeming  to 
limit,  our  commerce  with  reality  to  not  more  than  two 
of  its  attributes,  Spinoza  betrays  the  characteristic  vice  of 
all  who  would  set  bounds  of  ordnance  and  cry  "  thus  far 
and  no  further  "  to  experience.  To  Spinoza,  as  to  any 
man  who  would  circumscribe  experience  or  exhaustively 
state  its  "conditions,"  we  cannot  refrain  from  saying, 
"  Who  art  thou  that  the  full  compass  of  experience 
and  the  whole  sum  of  its  *  conditions  '  should  have  come 
within  thy  ken?"  Why  this  perpetual  insistence  on 
the  number  two  ?  Are  there  any  "  first  principles  of 
thought"  by  deduction  from  which  such  a  limitation 
can  be  made  good  ?  There  are  not.  Is,  then,  an  a 
posteriori  proof  forthcoming?  Can  we  establish  by 
observation,  or  by  introspection,  or  by  any  other  such 
method,  that  our  intercourse  with  the  world  does  de 
facto  assume  one  or  other,  or  both,  of  these  forms  and 
no  more  ?  Surely  no  one  is  in  a  position  to  answer 
this  question  in  the  affirmative.  Even  were  it  proved 
inductively  (as  it  never  can  be)  that  up  to  date  the 
mind  of  man  has  broken  out  into  no  experience  which 
lies  beyond  this  double  wall  of  extension  and  thought, 
one  might  yet  hope  that  in  other  conditions  we  might 
be  able  to  burst  the  boundaries  and  enter  upon  an 
inheritance  richer  than  this.  For  though  a  world 
divided  between  two  attributes  is  less  barren  and  less 
appalling  to  contemplate  than  a  world  monopolised  by 
one,  yet  the  relief,  after  all,  does  not  amount  to  much, 
and  we  feel  ourselves  recoiling  from  the  first  picture 
as  from  the  second  with  a  sense  of  infinite  dissatisfac- 


ART  AND   EXPERIENCE  45 

tion,  and  with  an  irresistible  impulse  to  rebel.  For, 
frankly,  our  experience  does  de  facto  overflow  the 
boundaries  here  assigned  to  it,  and  goes  on  overflowing 
them  undeterred  by  the  threats  of  any  formula  whether 
of  the  double-  or  of  the  single-barrelled  variety.  Nay, 
the  very  presentation  of  this  formula  only  seems  to 
provoke  our  experience  into  breaking  bounds  and  going 
further  afield,  according  to  the  saying,  "  I  had  not 
known  sin  but  for  the  law."  May  it  not  be,  then, 
that  this  limitation  to  two  "  attributes,"  to  two  sides  of 
existence,  to  two  modes  of  approaching  Reality,  is  an 
arbitrary  and  accidental  affair  due  to  the  contingent 
fact  that  in  modern  times  man's  interests  have  been 
mainly  confined  to  the  world  as  a  work  of  science,  to 
the  task  of  moving  its  masses  and  solving  its  problems  ? 
Is  there  anything  behind  all  this  more  august  than  the 
prejudice  of  an  age  and  place  ?  And  even  now,  under 
the  power  of  this  prejudice  as  we  all  are,  may  there 
not  be  less  prominent  types  of  experience  which  by 
no  manner  of  means  can  be  made  to  fit  into  the 
moulds  of  extension  and  thought?  When  we  enjoy 
anything  that  is  beautiful,  or  pay  homage  to  any  ideal 
that  is  worthy,  can  it  be  said  that  "  the  twin  attributes  " 
cover  our  experience  and  exhaust  our  world?  Will 
the  amorous  youth  of  Schiller's  poem^  with  the  "  namen- 
loses  Sehnen "  catching  at  his  heart,  or  the  child  who 
moves  in  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land,  yield  on 
analysis  a  confirmation  of  the  doctrine  that  the  world 
as  thinking  and  extended  is  the  only  world  in  which 
we  live  ?     We  believe  not. 

3.  But  there  is  a  feature  in  Spinoza's  thought  which 
redeems   it  from  the  hard-and-fast  character  it  would 

1  See  infra,  '^The  Manipulation  of  Man." 


46        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

otherwise  have.  What  of  those  "infinite  and  eternal 
attributes"  of  Substance,  other  than  extension  and 
thought,  of  which  after  a  bare  introduction  we  hear  so 
Uttle  and  desire  to  hear  so  much  ?  This  is  a  matter 
which  has  not,  perhaps,  been  weighed  with  the  care  it 
deserves,  though  Spinoza  has  himself  to  thank  for  the 
comparative  neglect  into  which  it  has  fallen.  Here  is 
pluralism,  and  pluralism  with  a  vengeance.  Here,  too, 
is  a  matter  which  Spinoza  did  not,  and  indeed  could 
not,  explain.  How  comes  it  to  pass  that  a  Reality  which 
is  known  to  be  capable  of  telling  its  own  story  in  infinite 
ways  is  yet  niggardly  enough  to  restrict  the  actual 
telling  to  two  of  these  and  no  more  ?  Surely  a  mind 
whose  experience  is  limited  to  the  reading  of  those  two 
stories  would  know  nothing  of  the  others,  not  even  that 
they  exist.  Either,  then,  those  infinite  and  eternal 
attributes,  other  than  extension  and  thought,  are  not 
there  at  all,  or  else  they  reveal  more  of  themselves  than 
Spinoza's  system  would  allow.  For  our  part  we  incline 
to  the  latter  alternative.  Spinoza,  it  seems  to  us,  here 
acknowledges  a  great  truth  in  the  presence  of  which 
every  cut-and-dried  system  of  the  universe,  his  own  in- 
cluded, becomes  inadequate  to  its  object.  The  world 
of  our  experience  which  thought  has  so  long  en- 
deavoured to  tie  down  to  a  unitary  or  a  dual  character, 
and  to  define  by  a  single  or  double  formula,  now 
appears  as  susceptible  of  infinite  characterisation,  as 
capable  of  sustaining  an  infinite  number  of  parts  no 
one  of  which,  and  no  two  of  which,  may  be  set  up 
as  including,  as  explaining,  or  even  as  dominating 
the  rest.  The  reign  of  thought  and  extension,  either 
or  both,  here  comes  to  an  end.  They  take  their  place 
among  the   others;  they  cease   to  stand  above  them. 


ART  AND   EXPERIENCE  47 

The  mere  circumstance  that  these  have  names  and  the 
others  have  no  names,  or  uncertain  names,  is  no  reason 
why  the  former  should  rule  and  the  latter  serve.  For 
the  theoretic  consciousness  thought  and  extension  will 
continue  to  do  their  work,  to  serve  their  purpose.  But 
conscious  life  in  its  fulness  they  can  oppress  no  more. 
The  world  with  its  riches  is  free  of  access  to  all  who 
would  use  it  otherwise  than  a  mass  to  be  moved  or  a 
thing  to  be  understood.  "  Be  it  unto  thee  even  as  thou 
wilt,''  Do  we  want  the  world  to  be  a  problem  ?  As  a 
problem  we  can  have  it.  Would  we  treat  it  as  a  work 
of  science  ?  As  a  work  of  science  it  waits  to  our  hand. 
But  do  we  want  it  to  be  something  else?  Who  can 
say  that  we  shall  not  be  satisfied  ? 

Ill 

Divesting  ourselves  as  best  we  may  of  professional 
prejudice  and  contemporary  bias,  is  it  not  obvious  to 
every  man  that  what  his  life,  his  self-conscious  being, 
demands,  is  neither  the  mere  explanation  of  its  objects 
nor  the  mere  synthesis  of  its  contradictions,  but  the 
enrichment  of  its  resources  ?  Science  with  its  explana- 
tions, metaphysics  with  its  reconciliation  of  opposites, 
are  but  two  among  a  thousand  streams  whose  waters, 
rich  with  the  gathered  rains  of  continental  watersheds, 
have  formed  the  mighty  River  of  Life.  Even  here,  no 
doubt,  we  are  in  danger  of  being  misled  by  words,  and 
may  fall,  if  we  are  careless,  into  the  trap  of  an  abstract 
formula.  Let  the  words,  then,  be  taken  as  no  hard-and- 
fast  definition,  and  let  them  remain  meaningless  until 
their  meaning  is  supplied  by  the  inward  meditation  of 
those  to  whom  they  are  addressed.  Quickened  by  the 
sense  of  something  within  us  which  demands  not  to  be 


48        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

explained  only,  but  to  be  enriched  by  every  contribution 
which  experience  can  pour  into  our  bosom,  we  open  our 
eyes  to  see  and  our  arms  to  receive  whatsoever  gifts  are 
held  in  store  for  us  by  the  inexhaustible  riches  of  the 
universe.  Then  it  is  that  the  world  begins  to  change 
its  character  and  to  address  us  in  another  language. 
We  look  no  longer  upon  a  scientific  construct  which 
asks  to  be  understood ;  upon  an  instrument  that  waits 
to  be  employed ;  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  work  of 
art  which  bids  us  receive. 

To  those  lofty  spirits  who  receive  life  as  a  gift  to  be 
used  for  ends  beyond  itself,  ever  ready  to  sacrifice  the 
life  that  is  their  own  for  the  life  that  is  another's,  the 
life  that  is  for  the  life  that  is  to  be ;  to  those,  again,  for 
whom  experience  is  a  school  of  moral  discipline,  an 
educational  system  for  the  training  of  a  soul  which 
when  trained  must  be  eternally  trained  anew — to  all 
such,  perhaps,  our  plea  will  seem  a  profane  proposition. 
Nor  may  we  expect  a  warmer  welcome  from  that  far 
more  numerous  class  to  whom  life  is  an  opportunity  for 
"  making  good,"  and  Nature  a  workshop  well  supplied 
with  tools,  machinery,  motive  power,  and  raw  material, 
ready  to  the  hand  of  him  who  can  use  them.  All 
that  is  merely  moral,  all  that  is  merely  strenuous,  all 
that  is  merely  scientific,  all  that  is  merely  hard-headed, 
all  that  is  merely  covetous,  will  find  here  nothing  but 
profanity,  moonshine,  or  irrelevance.  "  Call  the  world 
anything  but  that^'  they  will  say.  "  Call  it  a  system,  an 
organism,  a  school,  a  workshop,  a  battlefield,  a  mine, 
a  scene,  a  background,  a  phantasm,  a  lie,  or  even  a 
cemetery,  and  we  know  what  you  mean.  But  call  it  a 
work  of  art  and  you  are  using  terms  to  which  nothing 
in  our  experience  can  respond." 


ART   AND   EXPERIENCE  49 

Nothing  ?  Let  us  win  more  space  for  our  thoughts, 
and  then  ask  if  that  "  nothing  "  holds  good.  Turning 
our  eyes  from  the  diagrams  we  have  drawn  on  paper,  let 
us  look  up  at  the  stars.  Let  us  pass  out  from  the  close 
atmosphere  of  our  studies,  or  from  the  smoke  of  our 
battlefields,  and  stand  on  some  high  promontory  where 
we  can  breathe  the  winds.  Forsaking  for  once  the 
unsavoury  meat  of  straight  line  and  flat  surface,  let  us 
lay  our  hands  on  the  concrete  fact — the  bread  of  angels, 
the  food  of  gods. 

When  we  analyse  our  experience — placing  it  under 
the  microscope  of  thought,  taking  it  to  pieces  that  we 
may  piece  it  together  again  and  so  understand  "  how  it 
is  made" — we  never  fail  to  discover  sooner  or  later 
something  given,  and  we  call  it  a  datum.  This  datum 
we  characterise  in  many  ways  :  if  in  one  way,  we  become 
materialists ;  if  in  another,  idealists ;  and  so  forth. 
Without  the  datum  no  type  of  reflective  thought  can 
do  its  work.  Were  it  even  to  be  contended  that  the 
experienced  world  is  nothing  but  thought  evolving 
under  its  own  laws,  we  should  still  be  compelled  to 
take  this  thought  and  its  laws  for  granted.  They  are 
the  data,  the  given  facts  at  which  our  analysis  has 
come  to  a  stop.  They  are  the  raw  material  by  operating 
upon  which  philosophy  repeats  the  construction  of 
experience,  the  genesis  and  growth  of  the  world.  And 
in  all  this  there  is  no  suggestion,  not  even  the  faintest, 
that  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  work  of  art.  But  there 
is  a  strong  suggestion  that  we  are  dealing  with  some- 
thing analogous  to  the  mechanical  work  of  our  own 
hands.  All  that  we  should  require  for  the  building 
of  a  house,  for  the  construction  of  a  machine,  for  the 

manufacture   of    a   useful    article,   is    there — the    raw 

4 


50  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

material  to  work  upon,  the  rules  of  the  process,  the 
category-mechanism,  the  standards  and  tests  by  which 
the  product  is  to  be  judged.  All  that  essentially 
belongs  to  the  creation  of  a  work  of  art  is  absent — the 
abandonment  to  first  impressions,  the  acknowledgment 
of  a  secret  which  defies  analysis,  the  liberty  of  the  work- 
man to  be  a  law  unto  himself.  We  are,  as  it  were,  in 
the  atmosphere  of  a  great  industrial  centre ;  we  feel 
the  pressure  of  economic  arrangements ;  we  study  the 
division  of  labour ;  we  hear  the  buzz  of  wheels — and 
above  all  we  see  the  datum,  the  raw  material,  arriving 
at  the  depot  and  carried  in  great  waggons  to  the  mill. 
We  follow  the  history  of  this  datum.  We  see  it  going 
in  raw  at  one  end  of  the  process  and  emerging  at  the 
other  a  "  constructed  "  experience,  an  **  ordered  "  world. 
But  there  are  times,  more  frequent  perhaps  than 
most  of  us  are  aware  of,  when  we  are  in  another 
atmosphere ;  when  instead  of  analysing  our  experience 
we  see  it  steadily  and  see  it  whole.  If  experience  is 
to  mean  what  we  actually  do  experience ;  if  it  is  to 
be  taken  as  concrete  and  not  abstract,  then  it  may 
be  said  that  experience  never  occurs  as  the  analysed 
process  of  the  philosophic  workshop,  save  at  such 
moments  as  we  for  a  set  purpose  compel  it  so  to  occur. 
It  occurs,  so  to  speak,  en  masse  to  the  accompaniment 
of  great  emotional  reactions  of  gratitude,  satisfaction, 
anger,  horror,  love,  of  tedium  vitce  or  the  joie  de 
vivre,  all  of  which  emotions  (if  we  must  call  them 
such)  are  as  much  a  part  of  the  experience  as  are  the 
good  dinners,  the  bad  men,  the  beautiful  women,  the 
fair  landscapes,  the  hard  work,  the  ponderable  masses 
and  measurable  forces  by  which  they  are  severally 
evoked.    So  occurring,  experience  never  comes  with  the 


ART   AND   EXPERIENCE  61 

question  "  What  can  you  make  of  me  ?  "  It  says  simply 
"  take  vie.''  All  those  characteristics  which  appear,  and 
appear  only,  when  experience  is  passed  on  for  analysis 
to  the  psychological  laboratory,  are  absent  from  its 
normal  occurrence  as  a  vital,  concrete  fact.  The  full 
contact  of  life  is  not  with  the  datum  of  a  raw  material 
waiting  to  be  constructed,  but  with  the  donum  of  the 
Artist's  work.  It  is  as  receiving  a  donum,  not  merely  as 
manipulating  a  datum,  that  man,  in  the  broad  amplitude 
of  self-conscious  life,  confronts  his  world,  reacts  upon 
his  experience,  and  takes  up  his  task.  In  their  ultimate, 
which  is  also  their  primary,  appeal,  things  address  them- 
selves not  to  the  question-haunted  intellect  but  to  the 
receptive  soul.  Their  language  is  the  primitive  speech 
of  experience,  the  mother-tongue  of  life,  unique,  un- 
translatable into  meanings  borrowed  from  that  which  is 
beyond  themselves — id  quod  in  se  est  et  per  se  concipitur; 
hoc  est  id  cuius  conceptus  non  indiget  conceptu  alterius 
rei  a  quoformari  debeat, 

Now  this  is  the  language  of  Art.  Art  is  a  donum  to 
be  taken  on  its  own  terms,  or  not  taken  at  all.  Let 
those  who  would  take  it  as  a  datum  attempt  their  utter- 
most ;  let  them  analyse  it  to  the  last  atom  of  its  pig- 
ments, measure  it  to  the  last  subtlety  of  its  curves  ;  let 
them  write  its  history,  criticise  its  achievements,  educe 
its  meanings  ;  let  them  squeeze  it  as  a  sponge  till  every- 
thing has  been  said  about  it  that  the  tongue  can  utter ; 
and  still  it  will  abide  their  question — inviolate,  un- 
touched. In  vain  do  we  shackle  it  with  rules,  canons, 
formulae ;  it  stands  outside  them  all,  or  if  it  enters  for 
a  moment,  it  enters  but  to  die.  Would  we  reconstruct 
V  experience,  or  reconstruct  the  world  ?  Let  us  try  our 
^hand   at   reconstructing   a   Velasquez   or  a  Turner,  a 


\ 


52  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

tragedy  of  Sophocles  or  an  ode  of  Keats.  No  doubt 
the  results  of  our  reflection  or  our  criticism  may  be 
imbedded  in  the  donum  and  may  enhance  its  value  ; 
but  it  is  not  they  that  make  it  what  it  is  ;  nor  can 
it,  by  their  means,  be  re-made.  Evermore  we  shall 
find  that  there  is  something  that  escapes  us,  something 
that  is  not  "  made  "  by  any  of  the  modes  of  "  making  " 
that  we  can  specify  or  imagine ;  and  this  something  is 
not  accidental  but  essential, — it  is  the  vital  secret  of 
the  whole.  To  "reconstruct"  the  picture  on  paper  is 
not  to  reconstruct  the  picture  at  all ;  it  is  to  construct 
something  else,  which  differs  from  the  picture  as  the 
explanations  on  a  concert  programme  differ  from  the 
actual  music  to  which  they  refer.  How  much  or 
how  little  we  know  about  the  picture  matters  not; 
we  can  never  make  another  or  re-make  the  original 
by  the  aid  of  what  we  know.  If  you  doubt  it,  try ! 
Take  the  original  to  pieces  in  any  way  you  will, 
analyse  it  by  aid  of  a  pair  of  scissors,  by  chemical 
reagents,  or  a  critical  apparatus  of  what  kind  soever ; 
then  put  it  all  together  again  and  see  what  you  get  I 
You  may  take  a  work  of  art  into  your  intellectual 
factory  and  subject  it  to  every  process  of  dissection 
and  reconstruction  the  wit  of  man  can  devise ;  it  goes 
in  a  work  of  art  and  it  comes  out — something  else. 
Thus  it  is  with  all  paper  reconstructions  of  experience, 
with  all  "genetic"  theories  of  the  universe.  It  is 
experience  that  goes  in ;  it  is  not  experience  that 
comes  out.  We  begin  with  the  world,  and  we  end 
with  the  diagram. 

Unquestionably  the  world  can  be  "  made  "  to  speak 
the  language  of  science,  of  philosophy,  of  categories — 
mechanical,   logical,   vital ;    and    in    like    manner  the 


ART  AND   EXPERIENCE  5S 

Sistine  Madonna  can  be  "  made  "  to  fit  into  our  systems 
of  aesthetic,  and  defined  as  the  "  expression  of  an  in- 
tuition," or  what  not.  But  need  it  be  said  that  whoso- 
ever receives  the  Madonna  as  the  "expression  of  an 
intuition  "  and  nothing  more,  does  not  receive  it  at  all ; 

^  that  he  misses  the  gift  which  the  picture  has  to  give  ? 
The  "  value  "  of  the  work,  its  "  power,"  all  that  makes  us 
welcome  and  rejoice  in  its  presence,  lie,  not  in  that 
which  falls  within  our  formulae,  but  in  that  which 
escapes  and  overflows  them.  So  it  is  with  the  world 
when  "  made  "  to  speak  the  language  of  our  analytical, 
critical,  reconstructive  intelligence.  In  gaining  the 
form  our  philosophy  has  imposed  upon  it,  the  world 
loses  the  form  under  which  we  know  it  best,  respond  to 
it  most  completely,  and  react  upon  it  with  the  full  tide 
of  our  conscious  life.  All  that  we  can  "  make  "  it  say 
is  but  the  merest  fragment,  a  scarcely  noticeable  grain 
of  sand  on  the  shores  of  being,  compared  to  what  it  says 
when  left  to  itself.     Reduced  to  the  diagram  of  thought, 

V  its  values  are  expelled,  its  light  quenched,  its  pulses 
stilled,  its  atmosphere  lost,  and  the  expression  on  its 
face  turned  into  the  fixed  stare  of  an  effigy  in  stone. 
This  is  not  the  world  that  we  "  experience."  This  is 
not  the  life  that  we  live.  Like  a  picture  by  a  great 
artist,  like  a  flower  by  the  wayside,  our  life  is  given,  our 
experience  is  found.  The  world  stands  in  its  own  right ; 
it  waits  for  no  passport  from  the  intelligence.  As,  on 
the  one  hand,  we  have  not  earned  it  by  a  price  paid 
down,  neither,  on  the  other,  do  we  receive  it  on  con- 
dition of  our  own  ability  to  understand  or  explain  it. 
It  is  a  free  gift,  given  like  the  picture,  neither  to  be 
sold  for  money  nor  harnessed  to  a  purpose  of  whatso- 
ever kind,  but  to  be  received  on  its  own  terms.     To 


54        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

treat  life  as  a  conundrum,  to  regard  the  world  as  a 
problem,  to  withhold  our  full  acceptance  of  things  till 
their  why  and  wherefore  has  been  made  clear,  to  value 
any  moment  of  experience  only  so  far  forth  as  we  can 
make  it  pay  in  the  markets  of  thought,  or  submit  to  the 
shackles  of  descriptive  speech — this  is  to  reject  the 
donum  Dei,  and  therewithal  to  deprive  ourselves  of 
everything  that  makes  it  good  to  live.  Waiting  till 
we  can  "make  something"  of  the  world,  the  life  of 
the  world  passes  us  by ;  waiting  till  we  can  explain 
experience,  we  experience  nothing ;  the  music  sounds 
and  we,  preoccupied  with  desire  to  say  what  it  is,  as 
though  its  value  hung  on  the  interpretation  it  will 
receive  from  us,  miss  the  music  no  less  completely 
than  if  we  heard  it  not  at  all. 

It  is  surely  we  ourselves,  then,  and  not  the  world, 
who  have  tied  upon  our  own  backs  that  crushing 
burden  of  an  unsolved  mystery  under  which  so  many 
of  us  in  these  days  labour  miserably  through  life  and 
not  a  few  stumble  disastrously  into  death.  The  world 
never  asks  us  to  take  it  exclusively  thus.  It  is  we 
who  refuse  to  take  it  otherwise,  because  we  are  in 
bondage  to  the  prejudice  of  our  time  and  place.  We 
have  chosen  to  make  contact  with  life  at  the  solitary 
point  when  life  is  enigmatical,  and  with  a  strange 
perversity  we  have  planned  our  commerce  with  the 
world  along  rivers  where  the  ice  never  wholly  melts, 
by  ports  which  our  own  intelligence  has  so  often 
blockaded  in  advance.  Poverty-stricken  indeed  the 
universe  would  be  could  it  not  provide  a  sufficient  crop 
of  problems  for  those  who  gather  such  harvests.  But 
why  desire  them  exclusively?  Why,  with  the  whole 
land  before  us,  well  watered  everywhere  like  the  plain 


ART  AND   EXPERIENCE  55 

of  Jordan  before  the  Lord  rained  fire  on  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah,  why  should  we  pitch  our  tents  for  ever  on 
this  unpromising  spot  ? 

Life  and  the  world  are  not  alone  in  being  mysterious. 
There  is  an  enigma,  an  insoluble  problem,  in  every 
work  of  art.  There  is  something  we  cannot  understand 
nor  explain  in  every  perfect  lyric,  or  in  every  master- 
piece of  whatsoever  sort.  Do  we  value  it  the  less, 
do  we  feel  it  "  burdensome,"  on  that  account  ?  Do  we 
groan  in  spirit  before  a  play  of  Shakespeare,  a  ballade 
of  Chopin,  a  landscape  of  Turner,  and  say  of  these 
things  that  they  "are  black  as  the  pit  from  pole  to 
pole  "  ?  But  we  might  say  it,  and  should  say  it,  if  we 
made  our  contact  with  them  exclusively  on  that  side. 
Who,  by  choosing  that  line  of  approach,  could  not 
prove   that   the   Holy   Child    in    Raphael's   picture    is 

'  absolutely  and  for  ever  unknowable  and  to  be  ignored ! 
Had  we  no  business  with  works  of  art  save  to  under- 
stand them  ;  did  our  intercourse  with  them  withhold  its 
satisfaction  until  we  could  give  a  why  and  a  wherefore 

^  of  all  that  they  are,  who  would  not  clothe  himself  with 
sackcloth  and  put  ashes  on  his  head  and  sit  down  on 
the  dunghill  by  the  side  of  Job?  Nay,  is  not  their 
value,  which  is  their  deeper  meaning,  strangely  bound 
up  with  our  inability  to  explain  them  ?  Deprive  the 
song  of  all  that  by  which  it  overflows  intelligence  and 
escapes  from  formulae,  and  who  would  sing  it  any  more, 
who  would  welcome  it  if  sung?  Why,  then,  when 
confronted  with  experience  as  a  whole  do  we  force 
ourselves  into  an  attitude  which  in  other  connections 
we  recognise  as  cancelling  experience  in  its  richest 
form  ?  Why  do  we  limit  our  intercourse  with  Reality 
to  channels  in  which  the  water  of  life  runs  thin  and  often 


56        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

runs  not  at  all  ?  Is  it  because  the  others  are  not  open  ? 
But  who  has  authority  to  declare  them  closed  ? 

Every  work  of  art  is  also  a  work  of  science,  and  may 
be  so  treated,  though  never  so  as  to  exhaust  its  meaning. 
And  if  Ruskin  may  be  followed,  it  is  a  "  moral  order  " 
no  less.  By  approaching  the  world  as  a  work  of  art, 
therefore,  we  by  no  means  exclude  its  characteristics  as 
a  scientific  construct  and  a  moral  order.  But  the  world 
when  approached  exclusively  on  either  or  both  of  these 
sides  seems  to  us  to  withhold  its  essential  values,  to  lay 
a  burden  on  the  soul,  and,  be  it  added,  to  leave  us  with 
the  slenderest  basis  for  religion.  Unless  the  world  is 
more  than  this,  then — disguise  the  matter  as  we  may 
by  theological  diction — there  is  nothing  for  it  but  to 
accept  the  inevitable,  to  bend  to  the  categorical  impera- 
tive and  go  through  life  with  the  hope  of  its  rewards 
and  the  fear  of  its  lash  before  our  eyes.  It  is  a  poor 
look-out  I 

Enough,  and  perhaps  more  than  enough,  has  been 
said  in  support  of  the  contention  that  among  the  vital 
needs  of  a  self-conscious  spirit  the  need  of  explanation 
has  received  an  artificial,  exaggerated,  and  too  exclusive 
prominence.  To  avoid  this  exaggeration  is,  however, 
no  easy  thing.  It  requires,  in  the  first  place,  that  we 
rise  above  our  professional  prejudice  as  students  of 
philosophy.  Stern  candour  will  have  to  be  practised, 
and  some  cherished  claims  will  have  to  be  abandoned. 
The  bias  of  our  age  is  also  against  us.  Engaged, 
as  most  men  now  are,  in  scientific  constructions  of 
one  kind  or  another,  we  are  apt  to  treat  the  whole 
world  as  though  it  were  a  scientific  product,  and  to 
live  in  it  as  though  it  were  nothing  else.  Immersed 
in    the     atmosphere     of    this    limited,     and    perhaps 


ART  AND   EXPERIENCE  57 

temporary,  purpose,  we  want  no  other  view.  But 
were  we  to  emerge  suddenly  into  a  state  of  society 
for  which  artistic  creation  had  the  absorbing  interest  of 
present  mechanical  activities,  the  scientific  world-view 
would  no  longer  appeal  to  us  as  satisfying,  would  no 
longer  occlude  the  imagination  nor  present  itself  as 
the  chief  argument  either  for  or  against  the  existence 
of  God.  The  relative  importance  of  Freedom  and 
Necessity  would  then  be  reversed;  problem-solving 
would  cease  to  be  the  central  business  of  the  mind,  and 
instead  of  contemplating  an  "iron  system  of  Law" 
we  should  stand  in  the  presence  of  a  free  work  of  art, 
whose  "infinite  and  eternal  attributes"  no  science  of 
ours  could  ever  exhaust. 


III.— THE   USURPATIONS   OF   LANGUAGE 

How  can  the  Universe  tell  its  own  story  save  by  mak- 
ing use  of  human  speech ;  how  convey  its  meanings  to 
finite  minds  save  by  employing  a  thinker  to  declare 
them?  So  long  as  the  story  remains  unspoken,  un- 
written, can  we  say  it  exists  at  all?  Does  not  the 
significance  of  things  become  a  story  by  the  very 
process  which  ends  in  the  movement  of  an  intelligently 
guided  pen  over  a  sheet  of  paper,  in  the  reading  of 
printed  types,  in  the  utterance  of  recognised  vocables ; 
and  until  this  process  has  been  accomplished  is  not  the 
"  meaning  "  a  mere  promise  or  unrealised  potency  ?  Can 
we  learn  the  history  of  the  world,  and  of  human  life, 
otherwise  than  by  reading,  or  hearing  it  spoken  ?  How, 
then,  can  we  receive  it  without  the  intermediation  of 
a  writer,  a  speaker  ? 

If  a  story  be  defined  in  advance  as  the  work  of  a 
tongue  or  pen,  then  it  is  plain  that  the  story  of  the 
Universe  cannot  be  told  without  the  intervention  of  a 
human  raconteur.  But  have  we  the  right  to  enforce 
this  definition  ?  True,  there  is  no  story  without  form  ; 
but  to  treat  language  as  the  one  and  only  form  by 
which  connected  meaning  can  be  expressed  or  con- 
veyed is  a  preposterous  assumption.  Are  there  not 
many  Arts  which,  though  speechless,  express  their 
N    meanings  with  perfect   adequacy,  with   satisfaction   to 

58 


THE   USURPATIONS   OF  LANGUAGE  59 

the  recipient,  and  serve  at  the  same  time  as  a  medium 
of  communication  between  soul  and  soul?  Is  not  a 
drama  a  thing  to  be  acted  ?  Is  speech,  after  all,  any- 
thing more  than  one  of  a  vast  number  of  arts  by 
which  dramatic  meaning  is  expressed  and  intercourse 
carried  on,  and  does  it  hold  any  prerogative  or  special 
excellence  which  entitles  it  to  supersede  all  the  others 
and  absorb  their  functions  into  itself  ?  Or,  looking  at 
the  matter  from  another  point  of  view,  is  not  every  man 
familiar  with  situations  in  his  own  life,  when  the  needs 
of  self-expression  cannot  be  satisfied  by  saying  any- 
thing whatsoever — times  and  occasions  when,  to  make 
his  fellows  understand  what  he  means,  he  must  straight- 
way do  something,  or  be  something,  and  perhaps  hold 
his  tongue  the  while?  And  can  we  deny  that  the  same 
holds  good  of  the  Universe  ?  May  not  the  world  also 
express  its  meanings  by  doing  and  being  \  or  must  it 
confine  its  self-expression  to  that  solitary  form  of  verbal 
reproduction  which  we  recognise  as  inadequate  enough 
even  on  the  narrow  field  of  our  own  lives  ? 

Let  us  press  the  point  a  little  further.  There  are 
types  of  experience,  familiar  to  all  men,  about  which 
none  of  us,  save  the  foolish,  want  to  talk.  Enough  if 
we  meet  the  glance  of  an  answering  eye  or  feel  the 
pressure  of  a  friendly  hand.  There  are  objects,  there 
are  presences  in  the  world,  before  which  speech  would 
be  a  profanation.  There  are  crises  in  life  which  can  be 
indicated  only  by  the  barest  hint  or  by  some  distant 
suggestion,  and  which,  if  characterised  at  length,  would 
lose  their  inmost  significance  in  the  process.  Two 
lines  of  Wordsworth : 

"  But  she  is  in  her  grave,  and,  oh. 
The  difference  to  me  !  " 


60        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

are  a  more  adequate  expression  of  human  grief  than 
all  the  funeral  sermons  ever  preached.  Are  not 
the  richest  and  most  significant  experiences  of 
man  precisely  those  which  are  the  least  patient 
of  verbal  reproduction  ?  A  book,  a  treatise,  a  dis- 
course, is  the  very  thing  that  cannot  contain  them — 
that  can  contain  at  most  their  lower  elements,  their 
less  significant  aspects.  Who  shall  transfer  them  to 
paper,  write  them  in  ink,  utter  them  in  words  ?  And 
yet,  though  inexpressible  thus,  these  things  crave  ex- 
pression, for  they  are  full  of  meaning  and  must  be 
expressed.  They  have  a  language  of  their  own.  Art 
can  utter  some  of  them,  and  Nature,  perhaps,  can 
interpret  them  all.  They  borrow  her  tongues,  speak- 
ing in  the  winds,  singing  in  the  voice  of  moving 
waters,  looking  down  upon  us  in  the  cold  shining  of 
the  stars.  What  they  mean,  we,  too,  can  express ; 
but  we  express  it,  not  by  speaking  there  and  then,  but 
by  all  that  we  become  through  their  influence,  by  all 
that  we  are  led  to  do,  through  their  compelling,  till  life 
shall  end. 

When  we  adduce  these  vast  conceptions  of  "life" 
and  the  "universe,"  are  we  referring  to  that  type  of 
experience  in  which  we  can  establish  a  perfect  equation 
between  speech  and  meaning;  or,  on  the  other  hand, 
are  these  terms  anything  more  than  mere  hints  of  an 
experience  whose  meaning  can  never  be  exhausted  in 
verbal  reproduction,  mere  pointers  towards  an  object 
which  speaks  for  ever  in  a  tongue  of  its  own,  but  is 
never  to  be  adequately  spoken  of  in  ours  ? 

Philosophy  is  not  so  high  a  thing,  nor  are  philoso- 
phers hedged  by  a  sanctity  so  awful,  that  we  must 
needs   forbear  from   trying  them  by  the   simple   test, 


THE   USURPATIONS   OF  LANGUAGE  61 

"  What  do  you  want  ?  "  Does  Philosophy,  then,  want 
only  a  verbal  reproduction  of  experience  ?  Is  the  object 
merely  to  get  life  copied  in  language,  the  Universe 
photographed  in  concepts?  William  James  has 
pointed  out  that  nothing  is  to  be  gained  from  such  an 
undertaking.  For  the  original  will  always  remain  more 
significant  and  more  interesting  than  the  copy,  and  it  is 
to  the  original,  and  not  to  the  copy,  that  we  shall 
always  refer  when  we  want  to  know  what  life  is  or  what 
the  world  is.  And  since  the  originals  are  always  there 
for  reference,  the  copy  will  be  useless — at  best  a  play- 
thing, at  worst  an  encumbrance  and  a  superfluity.  This, 
therefore,  can  hardly  be  what  the  philosopher  "wants." 

May  we  not  assume  that  the  true  aim  of  the  philoso- 
pher is  something  quite  other  than  to  furnish  experience 
with  a  mounted  photograph  or  a  printed  description 
of  itself;  that  what  he  actually  wants  is  to  enlarge 
experience — to  extend  its  boundaries,  to  enrich  its 
contents,  to  reinforce  its  energies,  to  deepen  its  value  ? 

This  being  so — and  here  we  count  on  general  consent 
— how  comes  it  to  pass  that  such  a  work  as  the  philoso- 
pher's, namely,  the  enlargement  of  experience,  should 
be  needed  in  the  world?  Since  the  originals  of  ex- 
perience are  there  for  every  man  to  consult,  why  should 
we  want  a  philosopher  to  introduce  them  to  us  or  us 
to  them  ? 

We  want  philosophers,  among  other  reasons,  because 
the  world  is  full  of  false  philosophy.  The  way  of  ex- 
perience is  beset  on  every  hand  by  a  multitude  of  verbal 
judgments,  of  empty  phrases,  of  word-copies,  which  pass 
themselves  off  as  the  real  thing,  which  pretend  to  do 
duty  for  concrete  fact  and,  by  force  of  their  number 
and  importunity,  capture  our  attention  and  cause  the 


est  THE  ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

true  originals  to  be  overlooked.  If  it  is  true  that 
philosophy  must  perforce  fight  its  battles  with  words, 
is  it  not  equally  true  that  words  are  the  weapons  against 
which  it  must  everywhere  contend  ?  The  philosopher 
bent  on  the  enlargement  of  experience  perceives  at  once 
that  his  work  cannot  be  done,  cannot  even  be  com- 
menced, until  he  has  cleared  away  the  heaps  of  verbal 
detritus  under  which  the  bedrocks  of  experience  lie 
buried.  And  when  that  is  done,  what  more  remains 
to  do?  Enough  that  philosophy  lays  bare  the  ulti- 
mate fact  and  leaves  it  to  speak  for  itself  But  what 
a  labour  is  this,  and  how  little  need  the  thinker  fear 
that  his  task  will  soon  be  exhausted  and  his  occupa- 
tion gone  1  For  the  crusts  of  rubbish  are  very  thick, 
hard-beaten  by  the  traffic  of  ages.  And  when  at  last 
the  solid  rock  is  reached,  a  sandstorm  from  the  desert  or 
a  flood  from  the  mountains  may  cover  it  again  in  an 
hour.  Hence  the  thinker  who  has  cleared  his  object 
must  labour  on  to  keep  it  clear.  For  the  human  mind 
loves  the  bondage  of  words  and  is  apt,  when  freed  from 
one  form  of  their  tyranny,  to  set  up  another  more 
oppressive  than  the  last. 

The  highest  function  of  philosophy  is  to  enforce 
the  attitude  of  meditation  and  therewithal  restrain  the 
excessive  volubility  of  the  tongue.  To  us  it  seems 
that  the  reflective  thinker  wins  his  greatest  victories 
when  by  what  he  says  he  compels  us  to  recognise 
the  relative  insignificance  of  anything  he  can  say. 
His  task  is  not  to  capture  Reality,  but  to  free  it  from 
captivity.  For  there  are  some  things  about  which  men 
V\  disagree  only  because  they  have  chosen  to  discuss 
them.  The  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever,  they 
break  out  into  a  thousand  differences  the  instant  men 


THE   USURPATIONS   OF  LANGUAGE  63 

try  to  say  what  they  are.  The  originals  of  experience, 
the  last  objects  of  thought,  are  all  of  this  kind.  Enough 
that  the  thinker  has  brought  them  and  us  face  to  face. 
With  them  the  thinker  can  do  no  more  than  to  lift  the 
veils  in  which  language  has  shrouded  them,  that  they 
may  stand,  not  as  suitors  for  explanation  but  as  self- 
explained  ;  to  free  them  from  all  that  "  which  the 
\  intellect  perceives  as  if  constituting  their  essence,"  and 
then  leave  them,  not  in  the  dark,  but  fully  illuminated 
and  illuminating  by  their  own  inward  light. 

Thus,  in  dealing  with  the  last  facts,  the  words  best 
suited  to  the  thinker's  employment  are  the  words  which 
call  least  attention  to  themselves,  inviting  us  not  to 
look  at  them  but  to  look  through  them,  disarming  our 
criticism  by  their  allusiveness,  and  claiming  no  promin- 
ence in  the  total  effect  upon  our  minds.  Among  words 
of  this  class  it  is  difficult  to  make  a  choice,  and  we  could 
often  be  as  well  content  with  one  as  with  another. 

Philosophy  resembles  poetry  in  being  an  art  for 
enforcing  meditation,  for  driving  the  mind  inwards  until 
it  sinks  into  its  Object.  Those  who  attempt  the  con- 
trary, who  would  bring  the  Object  into  thought,  who 
would  reveal  it  by  explaining  it,  are  obviously  working 
in  a  circle.  For,  unless  the  Object  were  in  thought  to 
begin  with,  we  should  never  so  much  as  know  that  there 
is  an  object.  Hence  there  is  no  relevance  in  the  criticism 
that  such  and  such  a  philosopher  fails  to  explain  any 
concrete  object  or  event  unless  you  are  sure  that  he 
means  to  explain  them.^  Things  and  events  explain 
themselves,  and  the  business  of  thought  is  to  brush  aside 

^  "So  far  as  the  terms  they  [Plato  and  Spinoza]  employ  are  unam- 
biguous ....  they  do  not  sufficiently  explain  any  single  concrete  object 
or  event."     Professor  R.  B.  Perry,  Hihhert  Journal^  April  I9IO,  p.  622. 


\ 


64  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

the  verbal  and  conceptual  impediments  which  prevent 
them  from  doing  so.  Start  with  the  notion  that  it  is 
you  who  explain  the  Object,  and  not  the  Object  that 
explains  itself,  and  you  are  bound  to  end  in  explaining 
it  away.  It  ceases  to  exist,  its  place  being  taken  by  a 
parcel  of  concepts,  a  string  of  symbols,  a  form  of  words, 
and  you  find  yourself  contemplating,  not  the  thing,  but 
your  theory  of  the  thing.  The  Kantian  Theory  of 
Knowledge  is  of  this  kind.  It  sets  out  to  explain  the 
object,  and  ends  by  the  admission  that  the  only  real 
object  is  what  it  cannot  explain,  viz.  the  "  thing-in- 
itself."  Is  not  this  inevitable?  Get  the  thing  out  of 
itself,  get  it  into  your  explanation,  and  obviously  it 
ceases  to  be  the  thing  at  all ;  it  becomes  your  theory 
of  the  thing,  which  you,  in  desperation,  make  to  do 
duty  for  its  original. 

Surely  this  attempt  to  make  the  thing  intelligible 
by  getting  it  out-of-itself,  into  an  explanation,  would 
never  be  undertaken  were  we  not  the  victims  of  long- 
engrained  habits  of  verbal  slavery.  We  have  con- 
fused the  unsayable-by-us  with  the  inexplicable-in- 
itself,  and  drawn  the  Agnostic's  conclusion  that  things 
about  which  we  can  say  nothing,  can  say  nothing  about 
themselves.  It  is  only  on  that  absurd  assumption  that 
any  object  can  be  classed  as  unknowable,  or  thrust 
beyond  the  boundaries  of  intelligent  intercourse.  Were 
we  to  reflect  more  deeply,  we  might  discover  that  the 
true  reason  oi  our  being  able  to  say  nothing  about  this 
or  that  object  is  that  it  tells  its  own  story  so  completely 
as  to  leave  us  nothing  to  say,  explains  itself  so  adequately 
as  to  leave  our  powers  of  explanation  with  nothing  to 
do.  For  that  particular  purpose  the  thing-in-itself  does 
not   want  us  {non  indiget) ;    it  can  get  on   very  well 


THE   USURPATIONS   OF  LANGUAGE  65 

without  us,  perhaps  better  than  with  us.  But  philo- 
sophy will  find  all  the  occupation  it  desires  in  saving 
us  from  the  engrained  vice  of  our  minds  in  making  con- 
cepts and  their  verbal  equivalents  do  duty  for  the  real 
originals  to  which  they  refer. 

It  is  only  after  prolonged,  and  often  painful,  self- 
examination  that  any  of  us  can  realise  the  extent  to 
which  our  minds  are  in  bondage  to  words,  to  phrases, 
to  formulae.  We  are  the  children  of  an  age  which  spends 
the  best  energies  of  its  life  in  the  discussion  of  life,  in 
an  atmosphere  of  deferred  fulfilment,  continually  post- 
poning the  act  of  living  to  the  work  of  mentally  pre- 
paring to  live.  Preoccupied  with  these  preparations,  we 
become  sceptical  as  to  all  that  lies  beyond  ;  and  if  for  a 
moment  we  pass  the  boundary  which  separates  the  area 
of  discussion  from  the  fact  discussed,  our  minds  become 
troubled  and  amazed,  and  we  conclude,  strangely  enough, 
that  we  are  in  a  land  of  moonshine  and  of  dreams. 
There  are  philosophies  which  may  be  not  unjustly 
described  as  systems  of  everlasting  preparation,  and  it 
is  only  when  we  begin  to  ask,  as  we  must  do  in  the  long- 
run,  "  What  is  it  all  for  ?  "  that  we  awake  to  the  dis- 
covery that  we  are  living  in  an  artificial  world.  Many 
are  the  shocks  to  our  amour  propre,  great  are  the 
sacrifices  of  vested  interests  in  the  realms  of  thought, 
before  any  of  us  can  arrive  at  the  point  of  candidly  con- 
fessing his  true  condition.  Our  minds  have  gone  a- 
whoring  after  their  own  inventions,  and  naturally  the 
admission  is  one  which  it  costs  some  effort  to  make, 
and  which  we  desire  to  put  off  to  the  latest  possible 
moment.  And  even  when  -the  admission  is  made,  our 
difficulties  have  only  begun.     Habituated  so  long  to  the 

close  and  sickly  atmosphere  of  an  invented  world,  and 

5 


l^ 


66  THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

accustomed  only  to  face  such  storms  as  the  tongue  can 
raise,  we  are  apt  to  suffer  great  distress  at  the  first  taste 
of  the  air  of  heaven,  at  the  first  shock  of  the  blast.  We 
want  to  go  back  to  our  docile  abstractions — things  which 
had  no  rights  of  their  own  and  suffered  us  to  handle 
them,  to  arrange  them,  to  combine  them  at  will.  We 
hanker  after  the  flesh-pots  of  Egyptand  the  pleasant  smell 
of  the  onion  and  the  garlic.  What  matters  it  that  in  the 
world  of  our  invention  there  is  not,  and  never  can  be, 
any  room  for  God,  Freedom,  or  Immortality  ?  Yonder, 
at  all  events,  we  knew  where  we  were,  and  were  masters 
of  the  situation.  But  these  desert  spaces  bewilder  us  ; 
these  wild  winds  make  us  afraid  ! 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  much  scepticism  has  its 
roots  in  nothing  deeper  than  an  exaggerated  estimate  of 
the  functions  of  speech.  We  begin  by  equating  the 
speech-universe  with  the  fact-universe,  and  when  an 
alleged  fact  is  offered  us  which  cannot  be  fitted  without 
excess  or  defect  into  the  forms  of  language,  we  promptly 
dismiss  it  as  nothing  to  the  purpose.  Capacity  to 
reproduce  itself  in  words  becomes  the  test  of  reality, 
and  the  work  of  thought  degenerates  into  a  mere  effort 
to  find  some  verbal  form  in  which  facts  shall  repeat 
themselves,  things  re-appear,  and  experience  be  had 
over  again.  Inability  on  our  part  to  effect  these 
reproductions  is  taken  as  indicating  some  fatal  defect 
in  that  which  it  is  sought  to  reproduce. 

But  there  are  some  truths,  as  Plato  reminds  us,  in 
contemplating  which  the  mind  is  radiant  with  intelli- 
gence, but  which  are  no  sooner  described  in  speech  than 
we  "  fall  into  the  twilight  of  becoming  and  perishing  and 
\  have  opinion  only,  and  go  blinking  about,  and  are  first 
of  one  opinion  and  then  of  another."     Indeed,  that  any 


THE   USURPATIONS   OF  LANGUAGE  67 

concrete  fact  (or  event)  should  be  put  into  language,  so 
\  that   the   language  shall  contain  the  fact,  whether  by 
description  or  explanation,  is  a  manifest  absurdity. 

The  fact  "  in  words  "  is  one  thing :  the  fact  is  another. 
The  first  can  never  be  made  to  do  duty  for  the  second  ; 
can  never  replace  it ;  can  never  play  the  part  of  its 
alter  ego.  From  confusing  the  two  things — the  fact 
and  the  fact-in-words — we  are  bound  to  go  blinking 
about  and  be  first  of  one  opinion  and  then  of  another. 
For  every  fact  can  be  "  put  into  "  a  number  of  different 
verbal  forms  according  to  the  different  points  of  view 
from  which  we  approach  it  and  the  varying  purposes 
we  entertain  regarding  it.  Among  the  various  forms 
thus  provided  we  can  never  be  certain  which  contains 
the  fact;  we  wander  from  one  to  the  other  crying 
■  "  Lo  here,  lo  there  " ;  we  take  up  arms  now  in  favour 
of  this,  now  in  favour  of  that;  and  end  by  the 
discovery  that  the  fact  escapes  from  them  all.  Observ- 
ing, moreover,  that  among  the  descriptions  to  which 
a  thing  lends  itself  some  are  the  flat  contradictory  of 
others — that  we  can  describe  it  in  terms  of  "being" 
or  "not  being"  at  our  pleasure — we  straightway  jump 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  thing  itself  is  contradic- 
tory. The  object  before  us  which  was  perfectly  self- 
consistent  till  thought  essayed  to  place  it  on  the  tongue, 
now  with  a  strange  perversity  seems  to  be  equally 
patient  whether  we  make  it  say  "  I  am  "  or  "  I  am  not." 
This  indicates,  we  then  think,  that  the  object  is  unreal, 
imaginary,  or  fraudulent. 

The  whole  trouble  arises  from  our  not  perceiving 
that  the  thing  we  have  been  handling  all  along  is 
not  the  fact,  but  the  fact-put-into-words,  the  con- 
tradictions  we   ascribe   to    it   arising   solely  from   the 


68  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

opposite  points  of  view  from  which  we  approach  it, 
and  from  our  using  it  for  purposes  which  cannot  be 
simultaneously  fulfilled.  Broadly  speaking,  so  far  as  we 
have  any  purpose  in  regard  to  an  object  it  can  always 
be  made  to  say  of  itself  **  I  am,"  and  so  far  as  we  have 
no  purpose  it  can  always  be  made  to  say  '*  I  am  not." 
Again,  if  our  purpose  is  A  and  not  B,  the  thing  can 
always  be  made  to  say  "  I  am  a  and  not  ^  " ;  but  if  our 

^  purpose  is  B  and  not  A,  the  thing  will  answer  "  I  am  ^ 
and  not  a."  In  all  this  we  are  in  constant  danger  of 
confusing  what  we  make  the  thing  say  with  what  the 
thing  says  of  itself,  this  latter  being  always  expressed 
in  a  form  which  is  unique  and  for  which  therefore  no 
equivalent  translation  or  alter  ego  can  be  found  in 
human  speech.     It  is  the  familiar  confusion  between  a 

\       theory  of  knowledge  and  a  theory  of  being. 

A  good  illustration  may  be  found  in  current  discus- 
sions about  the  nature  of  the  will.  Put  the  will 
into  words  and  it  will  seem  to  break  out  at  once  into 
inconsistent  duplicates  of  itself  We  can  reproduce 
the  will  with  equal  ease  under  two  contradictory  verbal 
forms.  We  can  make  it  speak  in  the  language  of 
.  Necessity;  and  we  can  also  make  it  speak  in  the 
language  of  Freedom.  In  both  cases  we  are  handling 
the  will  as  an  object  to  be  studied ;  but  a  moment's 
reflection  should  convince  us  that  in  so  handling  it  we 
have  got  hold  of  something  which  is  not  the  will  at  all. 
The  will  is  very  much  more,  and  other  than  an  object- 
to-be   studied.     What  it  is  we  can  find  out  only  by 

\  willing  and  in  willing.  For  when  acts  of  will  come  up 
for  study  they  are  already  done ;  that  is,  the  will- 
element,  which  is  the  process  of  getting  them  done 
while  yet  undone,  has,  so  to  speak,  gone  out  of  them  ; 


THE   USURPATIONS   OF  LANGUAGE  69 

they  have  become  mere  empty  simulacra  of  themselves. 
These  empty  simulacra  are  all  that  the  intellect  can  lay 
hold  of ;  and  all  its  characterisations  of  "  free,"  '*  deter- 
mined," and  so  forth  apply  in  consequence,  not  to  the 
will,  but  to  post-mortem  copies  or  records  of  what  the 
will  has  done.  Here  the  intellect  is  always  too  late 
to  apprehend  the  fact,  and  must  perforce  content  itself 
with  the  simulacrum  or  fact-in-words.  About  this 
fact-in-words  contrary  statements  may  be  made  ac- 
cording as  we  approach  it  from  different  points  of  view 
and  for  different  purposes.  If  our  purpose  is  scientific 
there  is  nothing  for  it  but  to  use  the  categories  of 
science,  and  these  will  not  allow  us  to  regard  acts  of  the 
will  as  anything  but  determined ;  the  idea  of  scientifi- 
\/  cally  studying  that  which  has  no  determinate  character 
being,  of  course,  absurd.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  our 
purpose  be  to  get  something  done  which  is  as  yet 
undone,  we  are  bound  to  describe  the  will  as  free  ;  since 
the  purpose  to  get  it  done  would  be  vain  were  the 
will  already  determined  to  do  it  or  to  leave  it  un- 
done. But  neither  of  these  descriptions  will  express 
the  will.  This  can  be  done  by  self-conscious  action  and 
by  that  alone — in  other  words,  by  willing.  Accept  a 
verbal  interpretation  in  place  of  this,  treat  the  will 
simply  and  solely  as  an  object-to-be-studied,  and  that 
object  inevitably  becomes  a  mystery  and  a  contradic- 
tion ;  and  little  by  little  we  drift  into  the  sceptical 
conclusion  that  the  will  is  nothing. 

Another  illustration,  which  if  fully  discussed  would 
lead  us  further  afield  than  we  intend  to  travel,  is  to  be 
found  in  the  perennial  problem  of  Permanence  and 
Change,  the  One  and  the  Many.  Philosophy  has  been 
called  the  search  for  the  Permanent  amid  the  changing. 


70        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

With  this  account  of  philosophy  there  is  no  need  to 
quarrel.  But  having  accepted  it,  a  distinction  remains 
to  be  observed,  a  distinction  of  capital  importance, 
which  we  are  in  constant  danger  of  forgetting.  It  is 
one  thing  to  find  the  Permanent ;  it  is  another  thing  to 
find  a  form  of  words  in  which  the  Permanent  shall  stand 
permanently  expressed.  It  is  one  thing  to  experience 
something  fixed  and  changeless  ;  it  is  another  thing  to 
fix  this  something  by  a  changeless  definition.  The  first 
may  be  possible,  while  the  second  remains  impossible  for 
ever.  It  may  be  said  that  de  facto  no  permanence  has 
been  displayed  by  any  verbal  reproduction  of  the 
Permanent  that  has  been  attempted  up  to  date.  This 
is  as  much  as  to  say  that  the  Permanent  has  never  been 
reproduced ;  and  we  are  prone  to  think  that  from  the 
nature  of  the  case  it  never  can  be.  For  a  copy  which 
proves  itself  transient — as  all  verbal  copies  must  ulti- 
mately do;  a  copy,  that  is,  which  duplicates  all  the 
characters  of  the  Permanent  except  its  permanence — is 
not  a  reproduction  at  all.  Are  we,  then,  to  condemn  the 
Permanent  as  unreal  because  the  verbal  copies  of  it  turn 
out  to  be  transient  ?  Some  thinkers  have  done  so  ;  but 
only  because  they  have  failed  to  draw  the  distinction 
noted  above — that  it  is  one  thing  to  discover  fixity  in 
experience,  and  quite  another  thing  to  confer  fixity  in 
experience  by  a  form  of  words.  The  former,  we  repeat, 
may  succeed ;  the  latter  must  always  fail.  But  the 
failure  of  this  must  never  be  taken  as  involving  the 
failure  of  that. 

Suppose,  however,  that  some  thinker,  undeterred  by 
this  distinction,  sets  out  not  only  to  discover  the  Per- 
manent, but  to  deliver  it,  when  found,  under  the  form 
of  a  verbal  expression  to  his  fellow-men,  so  that  they 


THE   USURPATIONS   OF   LANGUAGE  71 

for  all  time  may  share  with  him  in  the  benefit  of  his 
discovery.  What  condition  may  we  lay  down  in 
advance  as  indispensable  for  the  success  of  his  under- 
taking? He  is  going  to  catch  the  Permanent  in  a 
formula,  a  definition,  an  expression,  which  shall  fix 
its  identity  beyond  the  risk  of  cavil  and  save  us  hence- 
forth from  the  danger  of  confusing  it  with  the  changing. 
Plainly  the  outstanding  condition  of  his  success  is 
that  he  shall  find  a  perfectly  unambiguous  formula.  If 
the  attempted  reproduction  is  going  to  change  its 
meaning,  if  it  is  liable  to  read  differently,  to  convey 
various  impressions  to  the  minds  of  different  men 
or  different  ages,  then  the  formula  itself  will  fall 
over  the  line  into  the  ranks  of  those  changing  things 
from  confusion  with  which  it  was  to  deliver  us.  To 
succeed  only  in  presenting  a  changing  expression  of  the 
changeless,  an  ambiguous  reproduction  of  the  unam- 
biguous, is  to  fail  altogether.  Certainly  you  can  fix 
nothing  in  a  fluctuating  medium.  And  since  the  medium 
here  employed  is  language,  it  is  an  absolutely  indispens- 
able condition  that  our  thinker  shall  find  for  his  purpose 
some  language,  or  fragment  of  language,  altogether 
exempt  from  change. 

This  we  say,  and  say  confidently,  cannot  be  done. 

For  of  all  the  media  of  expression  employed  by  man 
(and  let  us  never  forget  that  they  are  many)  none  are 
so  unstable,  none  so  quick  to  change  their  meaning, 
as  words.  Even  sculpture,  architecture,  painting,  in 
their  noblest  works,  speak  differently  under  different 
conditions ;  but  these  arts  are  relatively  immortal  com- 
pared with  speech.  Words  which  are  the  spears  of 
one  age  may  be  the  pruning-hooks  of  the  next ;  phrases 
which  are  the  ploughshares  of  the  Greek  may  be  the 


72  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

swords  of  the  Goth.  Nor  are  the  words  of  science,  of 
philosophy,  exempt.  Just  as  no  modern  audience  can 
ever  receive  from  a  performance  of  the  Antigone 
the  same   impression  it  made   in  Athens,  so  there   is 

y  no  man  living  to-day  who  can  read  Plato  with  the 
eyes  and  mind  of  Aristotle.  And  as  it  is,  so  it  will 
be.  A  thousand  years  hence  the  works  of  Darwin,  the 
theories  of  Kelvin,  will  be  seen  in  another  light,  con- 
nected with  another  experience,  evaluated  on  another 
scale,  taken  up  and  transformed  in  the  relationships 
of  a  larger  whole.  Even  the  truths  of  mathematics 
enter  the  flux.  Standards  of  universality  in  one  age, 
august  things  to  which  philosophers  take  off  their 
caps,  they  become  in  another  mere  pragmatic  expedients 
with  none  so  poor  to  do  them  reverence.  Every 
meaning   conveyed   by   words   is   relative  to  the  total 

\  experience  into  which  it  falls;  it  changes,  therefore, 
with  every  change  of  the  world.  The  laws  of  motion, 
the  truths  of  the  multiplication  table,  fall  ultimately, 
though  more  slowly,  under  the  same  fate  as  the 
maxims  of  politics  or  the  canons  of  literary  taste  ;  they 
change  their  values  with  every  new  purpose  for  which 
they  are  used.  It  is  indeed  surprising,  and  yet  richly 
instructive,  to  observe  the  extraordinary  modifications 
of  meaning  which  pass  over  the  most  carefully  framed 
scientific  definitions,  through  some  slight  shifting  of 
the  point  of  view,  or  through  a  change  in  the  atmos- 

V  phere  into  which  they  are  introduced,  or  even  in  the 
tone  of  voice  with  which  they  are  spoken.  Indeed  we 
may  conclude,  not  without  reason,  that  of  all  the  works 
of  man's  self-expression — and  again  let  us  remember 
they  are  of  many  kinds — his  word -utterances  are  pre- 
cisely those   which   fall   most   completely  and  soonest 


THE   USURPATIONS   OF  LANGUAGE  73 

under  the  law  of  change.  And  yet  it  is  by  means  of 
these  ephemeral,  winged  things  that  some  of  us  would 
reproduce  Permanence,  copy  the  unchanging,  fix  the 
secret  of  life.  To  those,  therefore,  whose  object  is  not 
merely  to  find  something  permanent  in  the  Universe,  but 
to  say  something  permanent  about  the  Universe — and 
most  of  us  have  confused  the  two  aims — to  all  such 
may  we  not  say  that  their  labour  is  utterly  vain  ? 

One  has  only  to  contemplate  for  a  moment  any 
possible  characterisation  of  the  Permanent  and  its 
instability  becomes  immediately  apparent.  Let  us  call 
it,  for  example,  **  the  Good."  Not  only  is  the  meaning 
of  this  term  unfixed,  not  only  does  it  vary  with  every 
change  in  the  moral  atmosphere;  it  may  be  said  to 
even  forbid  us  to  think  of  fixity.  For  the  good  is 
that  which  becomes  better.  The  good  which  has 
arrived  at  the  end  of  its  resources,  which  cannot 
transform  itself  into  a  better,  is  the  good-for-nothing ; 
in  other  words,  the  bad.  A  more  inadequate  term  to 
reproduce  the  Permanent  could  not  be  found.  What 
this  definition  intends  is  probably  the  converse  state- 
ment—  that  the  Good  is  permanent,  that  its  gains 
are  gains  for  all  time ;  but  this  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  the  definition  —  "the  Permanent  is  the 
Good." 

That  the  Permanent  can  be  expressed  in  a  large 
variety  of  verbal  forms — as  A,  as  B,  as  C — should 
merely  serve  to  remind  us  that  it  cannot  be  verbally 
expressed  at  all.  For  if  it  were  expressed  in  any  one 
of  them  it  would  not  need  the  others.  By  exhibiting 
a  group  of  such  forms  we  indicate,  not  the  permanence 
of  the  Object,  but  its  change,  its  instability  under  any 
one  form,  its  tendency  to  seek  expression  in  another. 


74  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

"  Implicit "  and  "  explicit "  do  not  help  us ;  they  merely 
point  to  varying  degrees  in  which  given  attributes 
appear — in  other  words,  to  "change."  The  more  we 
add  to  and  vary  our  devices  for  exhibiting  the  Change- 
less, the  more  surely  we  defeat  ourselves  by  making  it 
plain  that  the  object  of  discourse  is  changing  under 
our  very  hands. 

Here,  perhaps,  we  may  appeal  for  light  to  the  critics 
of  the  Fine  Arts.  The  various  arts,  they  tell  us,  differ 
in  the  degree  of  adequacy  with  which  they  severally 
render  the  "permanent"  or  universal  interests,  emotions, 
aspirations  of  humanity.  Architecture  is  here  more 
successful  than  Sculpture,  Sculpture  than  Painting, 
Painting  than  Music.  Regarding  speech,  then,  as 
only  one  among  the  arts  of  expression  employed  by 
man,  what  place  does  it  occupy  as  a  vehicle  for  the 
conveyance  of  this  particular  aspect  of  the  world  or 
life?  Can  we  hesitate  to  place  it  very  low — perhaps 
the  lowest  of  all  ?  As  between  a  Greek  temple,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  a  Platonic  Dialogue  on  the  other,  which 
leaves  the  soul  in  fuller  possession  of,  in  nearer  contact 
with,  the  thing  that  changes  not  ?  As  arts  of  express- 
ing the  changeless,  which  is  the  more  adequate  to  its 
object  ?  The  temple  may  be  in  ruins,  but,  even  so,  it 
speaks  of  Permanence  with  a  directness  of  appeal  which 
no  verbal  dialectic,  however  carefully  framed,  can  even 
approach.  Among  the  arts  of  expression  one  is  suited 
to  this  purpose,  another  to  that.  It  is  hard  to  express 
movement  in  stone  or  rest  in  music.  It  is  harder  still 
to  express  permanence  in  speech. 

But  speech  itself  has  many  varieties,  and  some  may 
be  less  adequate  than  others.  Prose  and  Poetry  have 
different  functions  in  this  respect ;  and  their  respective 


THE   USURPATIONS   OF  LANGUAGE  75 

values  as  vehicles  of  expression  vary  according  to  the 
point  of  view  from  which  the  object  is  approached. 
If  we  are  considering  an  object  as  something  to  be  used 
for  a  given  purpose,  the  prose  of  a  scientific  definition 
will  express  the  thing's  nature,  in  that  respect,  to  our 
perfect  satisfaction.  But  if  we  would  approach  the 
thing  as  what  it  is  in  its  wholeness,  seeking  its  permanent 
values,  attending  to  its  reality  and  disregarding  its  uses, 
then  the  poet  is  a  better  guide.  Wordsworth  does  not 
"  define ''  the  mountains  nor  analyse  them ;  but  it  is 
from  him  and  not  from  the  geologist  that  we  learn  most 
deeply  what  the  mountains  are.  To  the  man  who 
would  mine  the  mountains  for  gold  Wordsworth  says 
nothing,  science  says  everything.  It  is  true  we  cannot 
turn  this  statement  round.  Though  science  makes  no 
use  for  poetry,  poetry  is  enriched  by  science.  Poetry 
"takes  up"  the  scientific  vision  and  re-expresses  its 
truths,  but  always  in  forms  which  compel  us  to  look 
beyond  them  to  the  total  object  which  is  telling  its  own 
story  and  standing  in  its  own  rights.  In  this  the  poet 
and  the  philosopher  are  one.  Using  language  as  the 
lever,  they  lift  thought  above  the  levels  where  words 
perplex  and  retard  its  flight,  and  leave  it,  at  last,  stand- 
ing face  to  face  with  the  object  which  reveals  itself. 

The  objection  will  perhaps  be  raised  that  what  has 
been  said  about  language  destroys  its  value  as  a 
medium  of  communication  between  mind  and  mind, 
and  leaves  every  man  without  the  means  of  escaping 
from  his  private  consciousness  and  tapping  the  resources 
of  his  neighbours.  Such  a  view,  therefore,  carries  its 
own  condemnation. 

To  this  it  may  be  answered  that  whoever  defines 


76  THE  ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

language  as  a  medium  of  communication  between  mind 
and  mind  makes  a  statement  than  which  no  better  could 
be  found  for  illustrating  the  inadequacy  of  words  to 
express  any  fact  of  the  self-conscious  life.  For  the 
statement  implies  that  something  is  now  passing  from 
you  to  me — let  us  say,  ideas ;  that  between  us  a 
medium  is  interposed,  namely,  audible  or  written 
words ;  that  only  by  passing  through  this  medium 
does  that  which  was  an  idea  in  you  become  the  same 
idea  in  me.  Need  one  do  more  than  say  simply  that 
all  this  is  the  crudest  of  metaphors  which,  if  literally 
construed,  wholly  misrepresents  what  is  taking  place  ? 

Again :  assuming  a  Reality  which  can  explain  itself 
to  everybody,  would  this  Reahty  become  less  interesting 
or  important  in  the  event  of  our  being  totally  unable  to 
explain  it  to  one  another  ?  Is  the  value  of  a  fact  to  be 
measured  by  the  degree  in  which  it  offers  itself  as  a 
theme  of  human  eloquence,  submits  to  the  limitations 
of  language,  and  suffers  itself  to  be  bandied  about  from 
\  mind  to  mind  ?  Are  things  no  good  until  we  begin  to 
talk  about  them  ? 

And,  lastly,  would  not  all  we  mean  by  "  communica- 
tion between  mind  and  mind  "  be  provided  for  if  we  sup- 
pose that  common  knowledge  comes  about,  not  from 
our  explaining  things  to  one  another,  but  from  things 
explaining  themselves  in  the  same  terms  to  us  all? 
Accepting  the  object  as  its  own  interpreter,  as  its  own 
"medium  of  communication,"  do  we  not  begin  to 
understand  what  is  utterly  dark  on  any  other  view, 
how  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  resulting  knowledge  is  a 
common  possession  ? 

Here,  once  more,  our  best  witnesses  are  the  poets. 
Poetry  is  the  true  lingua  franca  of  the  world.     Far 


THE   USURPATIONS   OF  LANGUAGE  77 

more  richly  than  prose  it  stores  up  the  record  of  human 
experience ;  it  is  the  strongest  link  between  the  ages. 
It  is  no  paradox  that  in  poetry  there  is  less  ambiguity 
than  in  prose,  and  far  more  of  what  all  races  and  ages 
have,  and  know,  in  common.  Shakespeare,  after  all,  is 
more  intelligible  than  Bacon.  Our  minds  "  communi- 
cate" with  Greece  more  richly  through  the  verse  of 
Homer  than  through  the  wisdom  of  Socrates.  For  the 
poet  takes  us  straight  into  the  presence  of  things.  Not 
by  explanation,  but  by  indication ;  not  by  exhausting 
its  qualities,  but  by  suggesting  its  value  he  gives  us  the 
object,  raising  it  from  the  mire  where  it  lies  trodden  by 
the  concepts  of  the  understanding,  freeing  it  from  the 
entanglements  of  all  that  "  the  intellect  perceives  as  if 
constituting  its  essence."  Thus  exhibited,  the  object 
itself  becomes  the  meeting-ground  of  the  ages,  a  centre 
where  millions  of  minds  can  enter  together  into  posses- 
sion of  the  common  secret.  It  is  true  that  language  is 
here  the  instrument  with  which  the  fetters  of  language 
are  broken.  Words  are  the  shifting  detritus  of  the 
ages ;  and  as  glass  is  made  out  of  the  sand,  so  the  poet 
makes  windows  for  the  soul  out  of  the  very  substance 
by  which  it  has  been  blinded  and  oppressed.  In  all 
great  poetry  there  is  a  kind  of  "  kenosis  "  of  the  under- 
standing, a  self-emptying  of  the  tongue.  Here  language 
points  away  from  itself  to  something  greater  than  itself. 
"  Lo,"  it  seems  to  say,  "  there  cometh  one  after  me  the 
latchet  of  whose  shoes  I  am  not  worthy  to  stoop  down 
and  unloose." 

We  thus  return  to  our  first  position,  that  the  work 
of  philosophy  is  to  enforce  the  attitude  of  meditation. 
Reflective  thought  ends  in  the  discovery  that  we  do 
not  experience  any  object  until,  like  the  poet,  we  "  fade 


78  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

away "  with  it  into  the  silent  forest,  far  from  the  strife 
\  of  tongues.  Thus  philosophy  ends  in  the  wonder  with 
which  it  began.  But  wonder  is  no  name  for  a  calf-like 
astonishment  at  the  ways  of  the  world.  It  is  the  state 
of  a  mind  which  prefers  to  attend  rather  than  to  speak  ; 
which  listens,  and  listens  with  great  and  ever- changing 
emotions,  to  the  deep  voice  of  the  world.  There  is 
no  nescience  in  wonder ;  at  the  same  time  there  is  no 
loquacity.  Wonder  reads  all  languages,  though  it  is 
eager  to  speak  in  none.  It  reads  the  language  of  Art  by 
which  many  things  are  said  which  the  tongue  cannot 
^  say ;  it  reads  the  truths  which  require  whole  person- 
alities to  express  them  and  cannot  be  rendered  by  any- 
thing less  ;  it  reads  all  words  that  have  been  made  flesh  ; 
it  reads  the  actions  by  which  alone  the  truths  of  morality 
can  be  made  articulate ;  it  reads  the  fact-language  of 
the  Universe.  Wonder  is  also  a  patient  student  of 
philosophy,  but  looks  narrowly  between  the  lines  and 
weighs  the  things  that  are  left  unsaid.  But  with  all 
this  acquisitiveness  it  remains  to  the  end  the  most 
silent  of  all  the  children  of  the  gods.  For  it  has 
discovered  that  speech  is  insufficient  to  utter  the  last 
things ;  and  this  troubles  it  not,  because  the  last  things 
may  be  heard  speaking  for  themselves.  At  last,  after 
long  delay  the  wondering  soul  gives  form  to  that  which 
is  stirring  within  it  and  produces  its  works — art  and 
song  and  mighty  deeds. 

"  If  a  man  were  to  inquire  of  Nature  the  reason  of  her 
creative  activity,  and  if  she  were  willing  to  give  ear  and 
answer,  she  would  say — '  Ask  me  not,  but  understand  in 
silence  even  as  I  am  silent  and  am  not  wont  to  speak.' "  ^ 

^  Plotinus.  Motto  prefixed  to  Bergson's  Time  and  Experience 
(English  translation)  by  my  lamented  friend  F.  L.  Pogson. 


IV.— THE   UNIVERSE   AS   PHILOSOPHER. 

In  all  that  has  been  said  in  the  preceding  essays  we 
have  been  endeavouring  to  break  free  from  the  habit  of 
mind  which  regards  the  world  as  an  object  which  we 
must  either  interpret  exclusively  in  the  forms  of  our 
conceptual  logic  or,  in  the  alternative,  treat  as  outside 
the  bounds  of  human  concern.  This  habit  appears  to 
us  a  prejudice  having  its  roots  in  the  purpose  which 
dominates  the  life  of  man  for  the  time  being — a 
purpose  for  which  scientific  explanation  is  the  para- 
mount need.  Thinking  conducted  under  this  prejudice 
seems  to  us  to  be  incommensurate  with  experience: 
it  fails  to  do  justice  to  the  inexhaustible  riches  of  the 
Universe.  This  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  experience 
instantly  bursts  and  overflows  every  logical  dam  by 
which  the  intellect  seeks  to  confine  it.  Using  another 
figure,  we  may  say  that  experience  is  always  new  and 
the  metaphysical  bottles  are  always  old. 

In  place  of  this  habit,  which,  so  to  say,  allows  us  no 
rest  until  we  have  forced  our  words  into  the  mouth 
of  the  Universe,  and  restrains  it  from  speaking  any 
language  but  our  own,  we  have  tried  to  substitute  a 
more  catholic  temper.  We  credit  Reality  with  infinite 
modes  of  self-expression  besides  that  which  becomes 
articulate  in  the  forms  of  our  conceptual  logic.  And 
we  differ  from  the  Agnostic  in   holding  that  man,  as 

t  79 


80  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

self-conscious,  has  as  much  concern  with  these  unnamed 
and  nameless  "attributes"  of  Being  as  with  the 
one  or  two  which  lend  themselves  to  expression  by 
Science,  whether  of  the  positive  or  the  metaphysical 
kind.  We  are  not  referring  to  "  mystical "  states  of 
consciousness.  The  actual  and  normal  experience  of 
the  Plain  Man  is  a  reservoir  of  Life,  containing  much 
that  neither  seeks  the  explanations  of  science  nor 
sustains  them.  Man  is  something  more  than  a  mere 
"interpreter"  of  the  world.  He  is  the  recipient  of  the 
Cosmic  Address — of  what  we  have  ventured  to  call  the 
donum ;  which  address  is  conveyed  to  him  in  countless 
forms  other,  and  perhaps  richer  in  their  expressiveness, 
than  the  concepts  of  the  understanding  or  their 
corresponding  verbal  counterparts. 

In  this,  of  course,  there  is  nothing  new.  In  the 
opening  pages  of  his  Ethics  Spinoza  announces  the 
essential  truth  for  which  we  are  contending,  namely, 
that  Reality  must  be  left  to  tell  its  own  story  in  its 
own  way.  We  hold  no  brief  for  Spinoza.  He  seems 
to  have  fallen  at  last  into  the  toils  of  an  intellectualism 
from  which  he  had  promised  to  set  us  free,  and  to 
offer  a  "  view  "  of  the  world,  or  rather  of  man's  relation 
to  the  world,  which  falls  far  below  the  depth  and 
catholicity  of  his  original  insight.  From  him,  never- 
theless, better  perhaps  than  from  any  other,  may  be 
learnt  the  secret  of  deliverance  from  that  "bondage" 
of  mind  which  has  its  roots  in  the  exaggerated  claims 
of  the  intellect.  A  similar  lesson  is  being  taught  us 
by  what  has  recently  been  written  about  "the  sub- 
conscious," though  we  are  prevented  in  this  case  from 
grasping  the  full  importance  of  the  doctrine  by  the 
extraordinary  confusion  of  psychological  metaphors  in 


THE   UNIVERSE   AS   PHILOSOPHER  81 

which  it  is  presented.  The  doctrine  of  the  subconscious 
appears  to  us  a  hopeful  attempt  to  assert  a  place  in 
experience  for  those  "infinite  and  eternal  attributes" 
other  than  Extension  and  Thought,  by  reference  to 
which  Spinoza  warned  us  off  from  every  attempt  to 
limit  the  self-expression  of  the  Whole. 

The  world  is  like  an  actor  who  plays  many  parts, 
and  the  "  intellectual "  part  is  undoubtedly  one  of  them. 
Philosophy,  in  other  words,  is  one  of  the  forms  of  the 
Cosmic  Address,  just  as  Extension  or  Thought  is  one 
of  the  "  infinite  and  eternal  attributes  "  of  God.  If  it 
should  seem  that  in  what  has  been  said  we  have  been 
denying  the  rights  of  Philosophy,  our  reply  would  be 
that  the  only  way  to  effectively  assert  those  rights  is 
to  keep  them  in  their  proper  place,  which  is  what  we 
have  been  endeavouring  to  do.  A  Universe  which 
addresses  us  in  the  language  of  metaphysics  and  in 
that  alone  is,  indeed,  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  absurdity. 
A  Reality  whose  every  language  needed  translation 
into  the  language  of  problem  -  and  -  answer  before 
evoking  our  response  would  be  a  Reality  to  which 
we  could  not  respond  at  all.  But  while  we  challenge 
this  monopoly  of  the  intellect,  this  attempt  of  conceptual 
logic  to  lay  hands  on  the  whole  field  of  human  experience, 
we  are  willing  to  concede  everything  that  can  be 
claimed  for  the  rational  order  as  one  among  the 
many  self-expressions  of  the  Real.  The  world  does 
speak  to  us  in  the  language  of  Extension  and  Thought. 
At  certain  moments,  perhaps,  it  addresses  us  pre- 
dominantly, though  not  exclusively,  in  that  form  ; 
and  no  doubt  we  are  intended  to  listen.  We  may  go 
even  further.     That  man  alone  can  receive  philosophy 

aright   to    whom   it   is    throughout    a    speech    of   the 

6 


8«  THE   ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

universe,  and  not  a  speech  of  his  own  to  be  imposed 
by  him  on  the  infinite  other  things  the  Universe  has 
to  say. 

So  regarded,  philosophy  becomes  not  less  but  vastly 
more  important  than  it  is  when  seeking  to  empty  the 
world  of  all  values  save  such  as  itself  can  express.  So 
long  as  that  claim  is  made,  or  even  seems  to  be  made, 
Philosophy  may  count  upon  the  permanent  rebellion 
of  the  human  heart.  It  is  only  when  the  problems  of 
life  are  set  in  the  context  of  an  experience  which  as 
a  whole  is  not  problematic  that  we  can  measure  the 
importance  attaching  to  their  solution.  Hence  the 
advantage  of  making  our  first  approach  to  the  Object 
of  Experience,  not  as  a  scientific  construct  appealing 
only  for  an  intellectual  response,  but  as  clothed  with 
those  infinite  and  eternal  attributes  which  belong  to 
a  Work  of  Art. 

The  further  elaboration  of  this  will  be  attempted  in 
the  two  following  essays. 

If  Nature  produces  all  things,  we  cannot  escape  the 
conclusion  that  our  theories  of  their  production  are 
themselves  natural  products.  Philosophy  must  not  be 
treated  as  a  mere  addendum  to  the  Universe  it  professes 
to  interpret,  itself  having  no  intelligible  place  in  the 
world.  On  the  contrary,  among  the  facts  of  which  any 
complete  view  of  things  must  take  cognisance,  the  view 
itself  surely  counts  for  one. 

The  theme  of  the  present  essay  is  that  the  mere  concept 
of  the  world  remains  incomplete  until  it  includes  the 
interpretation  of  the  world  as  an  element  of  the  world- 
constitution.  The  philosopher  who,  like  Mr  Herbert 
Spencer  and  many  others,  professes  to  give  an  intelligent 


THE   UNIVERSE   AS   PHILOSOPHER  88 

synthesis  of  all  the  facts  accessible  to  observation,  must 
not  forget  to  include  among  them  his  own  occupation  at 
the  moment.  I  shall  plead  that  this  occupation  of  the 
philosopher,  as  he  forges  the  master-keys  of  truth,  so 
far  from  being  a  fact  of  no  importance,  is  one  of  the 
facts  which  vitally  affects  the  significance  of  the  rest. 
The  effect  of  its  inclusion,  by  any  scheme  of  thought 
which  has  hitherto  excluded  it,  is  revolutionary. 

In  a  sense,  the  question  before  us  is  the  old  one  of 
the  relation  of  subject  and  object — an  admission,  it  is 
to  be  feared,  not  likely  to  engage  the  interest  of  the 
reader.  I  propose,  however,  to  vary  the  dull  exercise 
by  making  it  specific  and  concrete.  We  shall  not 
trouble  ourselves  with  the  abstract  question  of  how 
mind  is  related  to  matter,  but  we  shall  enter  the  con- 
troversy at  a  higher  point,  and  ask  how  Philosophy 
(as  a  special  manifestation  of  mind)  is  related  to  its 
object,  if  it  have  one.  We  shall  turn  reflection  on 
its  own  process  and  results ;  we  shall  ask  the  philo- 
sopher to  consider  his  own  act  in  putting  forth  any 
theory  of  the  All-of-Things,  and  to  tell  us  what  place 
in  the  All-of-Things  that  act  and  that  theory  hold. 
Have  they  any  place,  or  none  ?  If  any,  what  ?  If 
none,  why  not  ? 

From  yet  another  point  of  view  our  study  may  be 
said  to  refer  to  the  general  context  of  philosophical 
investigation.  How  comes  the  Universe  to  provide 
room,  not  for  intelligence  in  general,  but  for  philosophic 
intelligence  and  for  the  philosopher's  point  of  view? 
What  kind  of  a  Universe  is  that  which  contains,  as 
this  Universe  undoubtedly  does  contain,  Mr  Herbert 
Spencer's  Synthetic  Philosophy  ?  How  is  our  conception 
of  Nature  affected  if  we  are  to  admit  that  Haeckel, 


84        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

T.  H.  Green,  James  Martineau,  with  all  their  specula- 
tions, are  natural  products  ?  Or  when  Huxley  discovers 
that  Nature  is  indifferent  to  the  moral  needs  of  man, 
what  is  that  in  Huxley  which  makes  the  discovery,  and 
what  is  the  discovery  itself?  Do  these  fall  outside 
Nature  or  inside  ?  If  inside,  what  shall  we  think  of  a 
Nature  which  in  the  fulness  of  time  is  able  to  produce 
a  brilliant  essay  on  her  own  shortcomings,  and  advise 
men  how  best  to  bear  themselves  in  consequence  ?  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  Huxley  and  his  works  fall  outside 
Nature  and  have  nothing  to  do  with  her,  then  to  what 
or  to  whom  do  they  belong  ?  Were  Huxley  to  admit, 
as  probably  he  would  have  done,  that  after  all,  the 
Romanes  Lecture  is  Nature's  doing,  then,  we  must 
ask,  is  she  also  responsible  for  the  very  different  view 
of  herself  put  forward  in  Martineau's  Study  of  Religion, 
and,  in  addition  to  that,  for  the  attempt  to  reconcile 
these  contradictions  which  we  call  Hegelian  ?  Are 
Huxley,  Martineau,  Hegel  (or  the  Hegelian)  mere 
spectators  of  a  pageant  in  which  they  themselves  as 
philosophers  have  no  acting  part  ?  Is  the  exhibition 
of  their  respective  doctrines  to  be  treated  as  something 
wholly  severed  from  the  pageant  itself?  Must  we 
think  of  these  great  men  as  seated  on  the  kind  of  throne 
once  occupied  by  the  God  of  Deism,  neither  of  the 
world  nor  in  it,  but  employed  in  that  very  work  of 
ab  extra  criticism  and  unrelated  vigilance  which  each 
of  them  has  taught  us  to  dissociate  from  the  name  of 
God  ?  And  if  these  questions  are  answered  in  the 
negative,  and  the  whole  situation  thrown  back  into 
the  arms  of  Nature,  is  not  the  reader  immediately 
aware  that  a  new  element  has  appeared  on  the 
scene?     Does   not  the  fact  that   Nature  can,  at  one 


THE   UNIVERSE   AS   PHILOSOPHER  85 

and  the  same  time,  confess  her  moral  indiiFerence  by 
Huxley,  proclaim  her  moral  concern  by  Martineau, 
and  strive  to  harmonise  the  discord  by  Hegel — does 
not  this  fact  radically  transform  the  conception  of 
Nature  from  which  the  inquiry  began  ?  And  if,  again 
— the  reader  must  be  patient, — it  be  said  that  we  are 
now  showing  symptoms  of  a  "tender  mind,"  all  the 
more  must  leave  be  given  for  a  final  question,  namely 
this :  Whether  the  pragmatic  doctrine  itself,  prag- 
matically appraised  according  to  its  own  rules,  would 
not  be  pragmatically  valueless  if  Kant  and  his  tender- 
minded  **  crew  "  had  not  appeared  on  the  scene  ?  For 
if  Kant  had  never  set  us  wrong,  it  is  hard  to  see  what 
"  difference  would  be  made  "  by  James  setting  us  right ; 
and  whatever  makes  no  difference  is,  according  to 
Pragmatism,  nothing.  No  tender  mind,  no  tough : 
no  Kant,  no  James.  Pragmatism  itself  compels  us 
to  think  that  tender  minds  and  tough  are  necessary 
correlates  in  an  organic  whole.  They  are  like  quarrel- 
some twins,  each  of  whom  finds  it  difficult  to  get  on 
with  the  other,  but  impossible  to  get  on  without  him. 

In  short,  philosophy  needs  to  consider  her  context. 
We  ask  the  philosopher,  who  explains  how  all  things 
come  in,  not  to  forget  to  explain  how  he  happens  to 
\  come  in  himself,  and  what  in  the  total  production  is 
the  significance  of  his  part.  The  secret  of  the  Universe 
being,  for  instance,  matter  and  force,  is  it  a  fact  of  no 
significance  that  the  Universe  has  somehow  managed 
to  find  out  and  publish  its  own  secret,  and  to  grow 
hilarious,  contented,  pessimistic,  or  heroically  defiant, 
as  the  case  may  be,  over  the  discovery?  This  con- 
sideration, which  becomes  the  more  weighty  as  we 
ponder  it,  has   been  curiously  overlooked.     There  are 


\ 


86  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

not  many  thinkers  who  have  learned  Fichte's  lesson  of 
catching  themselves  in  the  act  of  thinking  out  their 
own  metaphysics,  and  asking  whether  the  metaphysics 
so  thought  out  are  wide  enough  to  embrace  their  own 
significance.  If  the  reader  will  subtract  from  the  sum 
total  of  modern  philosophy  all  that  which,  while  ex- 
plaining all  else,  leaves  itself  unexplained,  as  a  mere 
surd  in  things,  he  will  find  but  a  scanty  remnant  left 
on  his  hand.  The  type  of  thinker  too  commonly 
met  with  to-day  is  one  who  violently  seizes  a  point  of 
view  outside  the  problem  he  is  seeking  to  answer,  and 
builds  for  himself  a  crow's-nest  of  observation  on  terri- 
tory and  out  of  material  secretly  filched  from  the  object 
of  his  inquiry.  I  have  in  mind  three  schools  of  philo- 
sophy —  Dualism,  Naturalism,  Pragmatism  —  claiming 
gifted  exponents  and  a  wide  currency  of  which  it  is 
strictly  true  that  they  either  beg,  borrow,  or  steal  a 
point  of  view  clear  outside  the  Universe  before  they 
can  tell  you  anything  about  it.  There,  in  their  crow's- 
nests  of  observation,  they  stand  and  speculate,  as  truly 
apart  from  the  object  as  the  soul  seated  in  the  pineal 
gland  was  apart  from  the  body  it  was  thought  to 
control,  and  stubbornly  negligent  of  the  fact  that  all 
the  difficulties  of  that  long-exploded  theory  are  sug- 
gested in  aggravated  form  by  their  own  attitude  to 
the  business  they  have  in  hand.  In  all  these  cases 
there  is  a  suppressed  factor — the  philosopher  himself,— 
and  though  this  may  look  at  first  sight  like  a  piece 
of  self  -  abnegation  on  his  part,  it  turns  out  on 
nearer  view  to  be  mere  defective  logic.  It  is  a  lame 
sort  of  synthesis  which  omits  the  synthetising  intelli- 
gence: Hamlet  with  Hamlet  left  out  is  complete  in 
comparison.     Had  we   not   other   business  in  hand,  it 


THE   UNIVERSE   AS   PHILOSOPHER  87 

would  be  easy  to  fill  the  rest  of  this  essay  with 
modern  instances  of  speculative  theories  which  appear 
to  "  work  "  only  so  long  as  they  and  their  authors  are 
regarded  as  existing  in  two  absolutely  separate  and 
unrelated  worlds,  but  which  lose  even  the  semblance 
of  truth  the  moment  you  try  to  establish  a  relation 
between  the  two.^  Give  the  philosopher  a  free  charter 
to  deal  as  he  will  with  "  his  own  "  intelligence,  so  that 
he  may  introduce  it  into  the  universe  and  withdraw  it 
without  notice,  and  any  conceivable  interpretation  of 
the  world  becomes  equally  possible  with  any  other. 
He  will  prove  to  you,  according  to  his  bias  or  yours, 
that  the  world  belongs  to  God,  or  to  the  devil,  or  to 
himself,  or  to  nobody.  Let  him  withdraw  his  intelli- 
gence from  Nature,  and  he  will  show,  for  instance, 
that  Nature  can  never  produce  the  human  conscience. 
Nature  then  becomes  a  mere  machine,  and  is  capable 
only  of  the  works  of  a  machine.  Let  him  surrepti- 
tiously introduce  his  intelligence  into  that  machine,  as 
Haeckel  does,  and  he  will  doubtless  be  able  to  persuade 
you  that  machines  can  say  their  prayers,  play  chess, 
and  indulge  in  repartee.  Such  a  charter  has,  indeed, 
never  been  given,  but  it  has  been  assumed  by  many 
philosophers ;   and  it  is  in  virtue   of  this   stolen  right 

^  An  instance  of  this,  taken  from  the  work  of  one  of  our  finest 
thinkers,  which  I  cannot  forbear  adducing,  will  be  found  in  Ward's 
Naturalism  and  Agnosticism  (vol.  ii.  p.  171),  in  the  famous  passage 
dealing  with  the  ten  men  and  the  ten  suns.  If  the  reader  will  care- 
fully consider  how  the  ten  men,  each  perceiving  his  own  sun,  come 
at  last  to  agree  among  themselves  that  it  is  one  and  the  same  sun 
they  all  perceive,  he  will  find  that  they  do  so  only  because  an  eleventh 
man  is  surreptitiously  introduced,  viz.  Professor  Ward  himself,  who, 
unknown  to  himself  or  any  of  the  ten,  pulls  the  strings  of  the  whole 
operation. 


88  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

that  not  a  few  of  our  recent  guides,  deceiving  them- 
selves as  well  as  their  followers,  have  been  able  to 
account  for  the  wonderful  tricks  the  Universe  is  able 
to  play. 

Between  the  mental  habits  of  the  age  and  its  moral 
tendencies  action  and  reaction  are  incessant.  The  logic 
which  governs  great  systems  of  thought  inevitably  re- 
produces the  principles  underlying  the  daily  life  of  the 
communities  in  which  they  are  born ;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  practical  tendencies  gather  a  new  strength  from 
this  reproduction.  The  correspondence  is  often  as  clear 
in  details  as  it  is  on  the  grand  scale,  and  many  a  trick 
of  thought  turns  out  to  be  the  reflex  of  thoughtless 
tampering  with  the  ends  of  life.  In  what  immediately 
follows  I  shall  suggest  that  this  holds  true  of  that  false 
conception  of  the  relation  between  interpretation  and 
the  Universe  interpreted  which  enters  and  remains  un- 
noticed in  so  many  current  forms  of  speculation.  It 
remains  either  unnoticed,  or,  if  noticed,  condoned, 
for  this  reason:  that  this  is  only  one  more  instance 
of  a  divided  mode  of  thought  to  which  a  divided 
mode  of  life  gives  perpetual  encouragement.  It 
repeats  in  a  particular  case,  and  in  a  less  explored 
region,  a  conception  of  man's  relation  to  his  environ- 
ment which,  in  many  other  ways,  sets  the  one  over 
against  the  other  as  unrelated  and  mutually  exclusive 
terms. 

Of  the  many  forms  of  this  divorce  the  characteristic 
example  may  be  found  in  current  ideas  of  private 
ownership.  Here  pluralism  reigns  supreme  and  needs 
no  advocate.  Here  the  ego  is  accepted  without  question 
as  the  starting-point  of  the  whole  adventure ;  and,  since 


THE   UNIVERSE   AS   PHILOSOPHER  89 

the  adventures  are  many,  the  word,  which  was  obsti- 
nately singular  for  the  tongue  that  coined  it,  is  endowed 
with  a  plural  for  British  use,  and  we  speak  of  the 
"  various  egos  of  various  men."  Society  is  the  sum 
total  of  these  "  egos,"  round  each  of  whom  possessions 
gather,  as  rubbish  gathers  round  a  stake  fixed  in  the 
midst  of  a  swirling  stream.  The  relation  which  binds 
the  ego  to  his  goods  is  an  external  attachment  only ; 
like  the  stake  aforesaid,  he  has  them  as  long  as  he  can 
hold  them,  and  in  no  other  sense  ;  and  the  condition  of 
their  belonging  to  him  is  that  they  shall  not  belong  to 
anyone  else.  The  egos  of  this  pluralistic  society  have 
for  environment  a  world  which  is  conveniently  plural 
also  ;  for  it  is  divided  into  a  sufficient  number  of  small 
lots,  and  as  you  get  the  lots  by  dividing  the  world, 
so  you  get  the  world  by  adding  the  lots.  Each  lot 
is  of  a  mixed  character:  it  comprises  cash  and  other 
values  of  all  sorts  —  money,  health,  mind,  morals, 
religion,  and  a  number  of  other  things  as  well.  As 
the  egos  are  many,  the  lots  are  many  also ;  each 
ego  has  its  own  lot ;  and  thus  a  picture  is  constituted, 
of  which  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  interest  of  variety 
is  lacking. 

This  is  the  pluralism  of  the  natural  man :  what 
mischief  it  has  wrought  in  the  field  of  social  ethics  no 
serious  observer  needs  to  be  told.  I  suggest,  however, 
that  the  same  mode  of  thought,  disguised  under  other 
names,  has  invaded  the  innermost  citadels  of  speculation. 
Thought  also  is  treated  as  the  property  of  thinkers ; 
and  the  thinkers  are  merely  "egos"  of  a  special  sort. 
Philosophy  itself  becomes  a  kingdom  of  small  holdings. 
Its  harvests  are  portioned  out  into  a  miscellaneous 
assemblage  of  **  little  systems,"  each  of  which  is  assigned 


90        THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

to  its  little  day  and  to  its  particular  philosopher,  who, 
like  a  pedlar,  hawks  it  round  the  world  in  his  pack. 
These  little  systems  are  exhibited  as  emphatically 
"ours" — and  the  truth  remains  unperceived  that  not 
only  their  littleness  but  their  insignificance  is  often  due 
to  that  very  fact. 

The  idea  of  possession  might  be  claimed  with  some 
plausibility  as  an  ultimate  category  of  thought.  The 
question,  "  To  whom  does  this  belong  ? "  or  "  Whose  is 
it  ? "  occurs  as  inevitably  to  the  philosopher  criticising 
a  new  system  as  to  the  child  who  has  captured  a  stray 
kitten.  As  a  popular  type  of  what  is  unthinkable,  a 
thing  which  belongs  to  nobody  would  serve  as  well  as 
an  event  without  a  cause.  If  the  thing  does  not  belong 
to  man  it  must  belong  to  God.  Taking  the  prevalence 
and  force  of  mental  habit  as  a  test  of  truth,  it  might  be 
claimed  that  the  concept  of  possession  is  exempt  from 
criticism. 

Let  the  reader  at  the  outset  measure  for  himself  the 
extent  of  the  tyranny  which  ideas  of  private  ownership 
exercise  in  the  thinking  of  the  West.  The  thought  of 
the  East,  or  rather  of  India,  here  stands  out  in  sharp 
contrast  to  our  own,  and  perhaps  the  subject  is  best 
approached  in  the  light  of  that  contrast.  What  makes 
Indian  thought  unintelligible,  or  at  least  unattractive, 
to  many  whose  thinking  has  been  fashioned  in  the 
British  temper,  is  that  it  does  its  work  without 
employing  the  category  of  possession.  When  Indian 
philosophy  is  discussing  the  nature  of  experience,  or 
the  self,  no  reference  is  made  to  what  for  the  British 
mind  is  an  essential  feature  of  the  case,  viz.  that 
"  somebody  "  must  be  implied  to  whom  this  experience 


THE   UNIVERSE  AS  PHILOSOPHER  91 

or  self  appertains  as  a  freehold.^  There  is  no  point,  I 
imagine,  on  which  it  is  harder  for  East  and  West  to 
understand  each  other.  The  philosophy  which  emanates 
from  the  well-furnished  studies  of  Britain,  and  proclaims 
at  the  outset  that  experience  also  is  "  my  own,"  must 
be  a  sore  perplexity  to  those  whose  fee-simple  in  the 
world  extends  only  to  a  loin-cloth  and  a  beggar's  bowl. 
Here  we  may  find  an  interesting  illustration  of  the 
influence  of  social  conditions  on  mental  habit.  In  the 
civilisation  of  the  East  possession,  as  the  end  of  life, 
has  not  acquired  the  dominance  it  exercises  in  the 
West,  where  it  may  be  said  without  exaggeration  to 
control  the  structure  of  society,  and  to  pass  thence  and 
return  thither  from  the  structure  of  our  thought.  The 
differences  between  feudalism  and  democracy,  between 
individualism  and  collectivism,  are  reducible  to  different 
methods,  theories,  or  ideals  of  possession.  Industrial 
society,  so  far  as  it  is  merely  industrial,  is  motived  from 
the  same  source.  And  we  often  find  ourselves  unable 
to  think  save  in  terms  of  proprietorship.  This  concept 
is,  for  example,  the  centre  of  gravity  of  our  legal  system, 
and  out  of  it  we  weave  our  theories  of  the  rights  of 
man.  It  is  the  basis  of  the  most  effective  half  of  our 
moral  distinctions  and  the  characteristic  notion  of  the 
West.     We  treat  the  whole  Universe  as  a  thing  to  be 

^  For  an  example  take  the  following  : — "  But  as  the  idealist  does 
set  forth  from  experience,  we  are  forced  to  inquire  from  whose  experi- 
ence the  start  is  made.  ,  .  .  We  must  surely  start  from  someone's 
experience.  From  whose  experience,  then,  do  we  start }  Each,  we 
say,  must  start  from  his  own  experience  or  from  the  sympathetically 
imagined  experience  of  another.  But  another's  experience  qua 
imagined  is  still  one's  own  experience.  Each,  therefore,  must  start 
from  his  own  experience." — Mr  Boyce  Gibson,  "A  Peace  Policy  for 
Idealists,"  Hihhert  Journal^  January  1907,  p.  417. 


9«  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

exploited  in  somebody's  interest,  and  build  our  doctrine 
of  reality  on  a  metaphor  of  cash- values.  The  rich  man's 
difficulty  in  entering  the  kingdom  of  God  is  ours  in  an 
aggravated  form ;  for  riches  are  not  so  much  the  means 
of  our  forgetting  God,  as  the  form  under  which  we  try 
to  remember  Him.  God  is  the  proprietor  of  the  world. 
Even  Milton,  in  times  when  the  fever  of  possession  was 
a  milder  thing  than  it  is  to-day,  traced  the  history  of 
the  world,  and  the  whole  scheme  of  man's  redemption, 
from  an  attempt  to  dispossess  the  Almighty  of  His  own. 
Thoroughly  native  to  the  Gothic  mind,  and  strongly 
reinforced  by  what  the  Goth  has  borrowed  from  the 
Jew,  the  concept  of  possession  has  laid  its  moulding 
hand  on  the  entire  history  of  Christian  theology,  and 
was  never  more  potent  than  it  is  to-day.  Not  so  long 
ago  the  present  writer  followed  an  argument  for  the 
existence  of  God  based  on  the  necessity  of  postulating 
an  owner  for  the  world.  Was  it  conceivable  that  a 
property  so  vast  and  so  eligible  belonged  to  nobody'^. 
Surely  the  earth  was  the  Lord's,  and  the  fulness 
thereof.  Whether  there  was  or  was  not  a  First  Cause, 
who  could  say?  But  the  necessity  of  a  First  Owner 
was  self-evident.  Such  an  argument,  whatever  be  its 
defects,  may  at  least  be  praised  for  taking  advantage  of 
the  weak  spot  in  the  heart  of  a  property-loving  age. 
When  possession  is  treated  as  nine-tenths  of  the  Law 
and  the  whole  of  the  Gospel,  it  is  not  wonderful  that 
men  should  ascribe  proprietorship  to  God. 

It  is,  however,  in  connection  with  an  idea  of  man 
rather  than  of  God  that  the  category  of  possession  is 
most  unsparingly  applied.  Passing  over  the  question 
of  the  rights  of  property,  in  the  technical  sense,  let  us 
consider    how    the    matter    stands   in   the  realms    of 


THE    UNIVERSE   AS   PHILOSOPHER  98 

psychology  and  metaphysics.  Here  we  are  at  once 
confronted  with  a  doubt  whether  the  philosophers  of 
the  West  have  ever  taken  heed  that  the  verb  "to 
have  "  which  they  use  so  freely  in  the  psychical  sphere 
must  be  given  a  totally  different  sense  from  what  it 
bears  in  the  purely  objective  or  physical.  When  we 
say  a  man  has  five  senses,  reason,  will,  conscience,  soul, 
we  are  surely  speaking  of  a  different  relation  from  that 
implied  when  we  say  he  has  five  children,  a  grand 
piano,  a  medical  adviser,  and  a  balance  at  the  bank. 
You  have  your  character  (an  Intuitionist  will  emphasise 
this) ;  you  have  also,  let  us  say,  a  testimonial  from  your 
last  employer ;  but  "  having  "  in  the  first  case  denotes 
the  exercise  of  an  essential  function  of  your  being ;  in 
the  second,  a  purely  accidental  circumstance.  Conceive 
then  the  confusion  which  results,  when  even  in  ap- 
proved works  of  psychology  the  mechanical  category  is 
transferred  into  the  spiritual  world,  and  we  are  asked 
to  do  our  thinking  as  though  this  category  meant  the 
same  thing  in  the  one  as  in  the  other.  Man  has  a  body 
and  he  has  a  soul ;  but  who  is  the  man  claiming  these 
assets  if  he  be  not  the  assets  he  claims  ?  Or  perhaps 
the  soul  is  the  owner  of  the  body.  Is  the  body,  then, 
a  corpse  ? 

But  these  are  crude  examples  taken  from  children's 
primers  and  such  like :  let  us  consult  the  philosophers. 
According  to  them,  man  has  a  place  in  Nature  ;  he  has 
a  relation  to  the  Universe  and  God  ;  he  has  duties  to 
his  neighbour  and  to  himself ;  he  has  an  end  to  accom- 
plish ;  he  has  experience  in  all  its  varieties ;  he  has 
right  impulses  and  wrong ;  he  has  individuality  which 
he  is  told  to  guard  lest  it  be  taken  from  him ;  he  has 
virtues  of  which  hostile  powers  would  "  rob  "  him ;  he 


94  THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

has  vices  which  he  had  better  get  rid  of ;  he  has  an  ego 
which  is  his  very  own  ;  he  has  a  soul  which  he  may 
sell — and  so  on  through  a  veritable  auctioneer's  cata- 
logue of  man's  effects.  But  who  is  the  owner  of  these 
job-lots  ?  He  is  behind  the  scenes  ;  but  if  you  seek 
him  there  you  will  not  find  him.  When  you  think  you 
have  got  him,  he  turns  instantly  into  one  of  his  own 
possessions.  It  helps  not  a  whit  to  refer  us  to  a  higher 
self :  for  this  higher  self  also  turns  out  to  be  something 
man  has.  Who,  then,  is  Man?  Is  he  the  selfless 
owner  of  himself?  We  flounder  in  a  realm  of  non- 
>y  sense,  trying  once  more  to  cook  the  hare  we  cannot 
catch. 

In  regard  to  Philosophy  itself  we  are  apt  to  set  up 
the  same  dualism,  and  again  to  think  of  the  relation 
between  philosopher  and  system  under  the  category  of 
ownership.  Noteworthy  here  is  the  impersonal  char- 
acter of  the  great  systems  of  Indian  thought.  We  of 
the  West,  although  on  occasion  we  can  adopt  im- 
personal language,  are  yet  inclined  to  allow  an  import- 
ance to  persons,  in  this  connection,  which  is  foreign  to 
the  philosophic  temper  both  of  India  and  of  Greece, 
and  which,  I  venture  to  think,  has  done  much  to  darken 
the  outlook  of  Western  thought  in  the  higher  realms  of 
speculation.  The  question,  "  Whose  is  it  ? "  disturbs 
the  significance  of  any  interpretation  of  the  Universe 
we  may  happen  to  consider.  It  is  Plato's ;  it  is 
Spinoza's  ;  it  is  Kant's ;  it  is  Haeckel's.  We  cannot 
rid  ourselves  of  the  obsession  of  the  possessive  case. 
The  truths  of  thought,  like  Mr  Boyce  Gibson's 
"  experience,"  must  belong  to  someone,  and  the  shadow 
of  this  someone — often,  alas  !  his  speaking  substance 
as  well — is  only  too  apt  to  dominate  our  interest  in 


THE   UNIVERSE   AS   PHILOSOPHER  95 

the  controversy.  If  truth  is  to  be  told,  we  must  con- 
fess that  no  small  part  of  the  current  output  of  philo- 
sophy is  concerned  with  the  rights  of  famous  thinkers 
to  possess  their  own.  Standards  are  raised ;  parties 
formed ;  raids  planned  on  the  reputation  of  great 
names.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  feature  of  the 
case  has  added  something  to  the  zest  of  philosophical 
controversy  in  the  West,  and  won  to  it  the  interest  of 
many  persons  who  might  otherwise  have  concluded 
that  philosophy  provides  nothing  worth  fighting  about. 
How  much  the  higher  thought  owes  to  this  kind  of 
belligerency  is  not  an  easy  question ;  but  I  am  not  one 
for  overestimating  the  debt.  Nor  would  I  rate  more 
highly  the  services  of  another  set  of  individuals  whose 
method,  though  a  seeming  antithesis  to  that  just 
described,  is  but  an  exaggerated  expression  of  the  same 
spirit.  Not  least  among  the  chastisements  of  that 
plague  of  egos  wherewith  our  sins  have  afflicted  us  is 
the  apparition  of  superior  persons  who,  under  the  proud 
title  of  "  independent  thinkers,"  glory  in  the  shame  of 
being  no  man's  disciples.  Owing  everything  to  the 
leaders  they  are  so  anxious  to  repudiate,  and  smiting 
them  with  weapons  stolen  from  their  armouries,  they 
contribute  nothing  to  thought  save  an  illustration  of 
the  utter  blindness  that  overtakes  it  when  ingratitude 
and  vanity  are  allowed  to  enter  in.  To  capture  any 
portion  of  the  kingdom  of  truth  and  to  keep  it  for  one  s 
very  own,  is  not  only  forbidden  by  the  nature  of  truth, 
but  is  an  ambition  unworthy  of  the  thinker.  The 
example  of  Plato  might  be  studied  with  good  effect. 
Advancing  far  beyond  the  teaching  of  his  Master  he 
nevertheless  placed  his  own  thoughts  on  that  Master's 
lips  and  himself  passed  out  of  sight. 


96  THE  ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

Certain  it  is  that  the  temper  in  which  these  lofty 
studies  are  pursued  is  too  often  identical  with  that 
which  prompts  an  Englishman  to  proclaim  his  house 
as  his  castle  or  to  form  a  syndicate  for  buying  up  a 
promising  concern.  To  have  a  philosophy  is  dear  to 
the  heart  of  an  enlightened  Western,  and  he  "  has  "  it 
in  the  same  sense  that  he  "  has  "  an  edition  of  Plato  in 
his  library,  a  Morris  paper  in  his  drawing-room,  and  an 
ornamental  knocker  on  his  front  door.  It  is  the  captive 
of  his  bow  and  spear.  If  you  attack  his  views  he  will 
treat  you  as  threatening  his  property.  You  shall  not 
"  rob  "  him  of  his  faith  ;  you  shall  not  dispossess  him  of 
his  point  of  view.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  sphere  in 
which  this  temper  is  most  active  is  that  of  Philosophy 
and  Theology.  "My  philosophy"  will  always  pass 
current ;  "  my  religion  "  is  condoned  ;  but  "  my  science  " 
is  admittedly  absurd.  The  field  of  scientific  inquiry, 
alas  1  is  not  free  from  the  curse  of  personal  claims,  but 
we  should  be  startled  to  hear  the  ether  described  as  Lord 
Kelvin's,  or  a  treatise  on  iron  introduced  by  the  statement 
that  the  iron  in  question  belonged  to  "  somebody."  The 
subject  of  science  may  safely  be  trusted  to  walk  abroad 
by  itself;  but  metaphysical  entities  must  always  be 
accompanied  by  the  owner  and  led  by  a  string.  Why 
is  this  ? 

The  foregoing  discussion  is  intended  to  suggest  that 
we  are  dealing  with  no  casual  metaphor  but  with  a 
deeply  rooted  intellectual  habit  continuous  in  character 
with  the  ethical  conditions  of  the  age.  We  have  now 
to  examine  the  actual  effects  of  this  habit  in  the  field 
of  philosophical  inquiry.  Briefly,  the  effects  may  be 
summed   up   as   the   introduction    of   an   unsuspected 


THE   UNIVERSE    AS  PHILOSOPHER  97 

dualism  into  the  centre  of  the  Monistic  camp.  Thanks 
to  the  power  of  the  possessive  case — a  power  equalled 
only  by  that  of  "juxtaposition" — philosophy  has  been 
detached  from  its  fitting  context  in  the  All-of-Things 
and  made  the  property  of  a  set  of  persons,  namely 
philosophers,  whose  business  is  to  stand  apart  from  the 
Universe  and  take  copies  of  its  underlying  principles. 
Here  stands  the  philosopher,  ready  to  begin ;  there  lies 
the  Universe,  the  corpus  vile  of  the  experiment,  a  poor, 
passive,  long-suffering  object,  waiting  to  receive  a 
character  and  be  clothed  upon  by  any  rag  of  a  theory 
which  philosophy  may  cast  upon  its  nakedness.  The 
inquiry  proceeds,  and,  "facts"  having  been  duly 
examined  and  the  victim  graciously  permitted  to  give 
evidence  on  its  own  behalf,  sentence  is  pronounced  for 
the  One  or  the  Many,  for  Chance  or  Design.  The 
philosopher  has  given  his  award  and  the  spectators  may 
now  disperse,  leaving  the  Universe  in  its  rational  clothes 
and  with  the  judge's  label  pinned  on  its  back.  That 
professed  dualists  should  conceive  the  matter  in  this 
way  need  occasion  no  surprise,  though  to  them  one 
might  commend  the  criticism  of  Mr  James,  and  remind 
them  that  it  "  makes  no  difference  "  to  the  Universe 
whether  it  is  thus  "copied"  or  not.  But  that  any  thinker 
who  goes  the  length  of  asserting  the  essential  unity  of 
the  world  should  thus  desert  his  principles  every  time 
he  enters  his  own  front  door  is,  I  venture  to  think,  a 
very  remarkable  and  perplexing  phenomenon.  Such 
combinations  of  fidelity  abroad  with  treachery  at  home 
are  by  no  means  uncommon. 

To  one  who  professes  Monism  in  any  of  its  forms 
this  may  be  commended  as  self-evident  truth :  that 
every  interpretation  of  the  Universe  is  itself  an  element 


98  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

in  the  Universe  to  be  interpreted  ;  whence  it  follows  that 
no  interpretation  is  valid  which  fails  to  account  for  its 
own  presence  as  an  organic  factor  in  the  All-of-Things. 
If  we  take  two  philosophers,  one  of  whom  habitually 
speaks  of  the  Universe  as  containing  his  own  interpreta- 
tion of  it,  and  the  other  as  not  containing  this,  it  is 
clear  that  they  are  not  speaking  of  the  same  Universe. 
The  conception  of  the  latter  is  obviously  incomplete, 
for  there  is  something  which  that  Universe  does  not 
include,  viz.  the  interpretation  given,  in  consequence  of 
which  exclusion  it  cannot  claim  to  be  the  ^//-of-Things. 
Even  Mr  James  seems  to  regard  the  world  as  containing 
the  pluralistic  hypothesis,  perhaps  as  one  of  its  unaccount- 
able elements,  and  as  owing  not  a  little  of  its  interest 
to  that  circumstance.  The  reader  who  is  candid  with 
himself  will,  I  believe,  have  to  confess  that  whenever 
he  thinks  of  the  world  he  must  needs  think  of  it  with 
his  own  interpretation  superadded,  and  cannot  indeed 
think  of  it  in  any  other  way.  The  mere  fact  that  he 
calls  it  "  a  world  "  shows  that  he  has  already  found  a 
meaning  in  it. 

Let  us,  then,  suppose  a  formula  to  be  discovered  which 
should  enable  us  to  give  a  rational  explanation  of  the 
Universe  throughout  the  entire  range  of  its  physical  and 
psychical  phenomena.  The  formula  might  be  Spirit,  or 
the  Idea  of  the  Good,  or  One  Substance  with  infinite 
attributes,  or  Matter  and  Force  :  the  content  is  quite 
irrelevant.  What  we  have  now  to  ask  is.  Does  the 
formula  cover  its  own  presence  among  the  facts  to 
be  interpreted  ?  Is  it  self-explanatory  ?  Has  Plato's 
Universe  a  place  for  Plato  and  his  Republic,  Spinoza's 
Substance  for  Spinoza  and  the  Ethic,  Haeckel's  for 
Haeckel  and  his  Riddle  ?     Or  does  the  formula  fail  at 


THE   UNIVERSE   AS   PHILOSOPHER  99 

that  precise  point  where  the  arrival  of  the  philosopher 
is  the  feature  of  absorbing  interest  ?  Would  the  inter- 
pretation embrace  every  conceivable  fact  and  problem 
save  only  the  seeming  detail  that  someone  is  interpreting 
all  things  in  that  precise  and  particular  way  ?  If  the 
exception  be  allowed,  let  the  reader  carefully  consider 
what  follows — which  is  nothing  less  than  the  downfall  of 
Monism.  We  are  left  with  a  Monistic  formula  on  this 
side  and  a  Monistic  Universe  on  that :  but  the  formula 
and  the  Universe  are  as  separate  from  one  another,  as 
distinct  in  being,  as  mind  and  matter  were  in  the 
Dualism  of  the  Middle  Ages.  An  explanation  which 
explains  the  Universe,  but  which  the  Universe  itself 
cannot  explain  in  return,  leaves  us  still  groping 
among  the  beggarly  elements  of  common  sense:  it 
fails  to  bring  the  controversy  one  hairsbreadth  nearer 
to  solution. 

The  point  at  issue  is  obscured  by  the  abstract  form 
in  which  the  problems  of  philosophy  are  usually  stated. 
Thus  we  are  asked  to  consider  the  relation  of  mind  to 
matter.  Can  matter  account  for  mind  ?  can  mind 
account  for  matter  ?  Well,  let  us  suppose  that  either 
could  be  done.  You  have,  say,  a  theory  of  the  Universe 
which  sufficiently  accounts  for  mind  as  the  necessary 
consequence  of  some  primordial  arrangement  of  matter 
and  force.  But  that  is  not  the  last  question  at  issue. 
It  is  nothing  to  the  purpose  when  you  tell  me  how 
matter  accounts  for  mind :  what  I  want  to  know  is, 
how  it  accounts  for  mind  as  manifested  in  the  very  act 
of  putting  this  interpretation  on  matter  s  potencies  and 
powers.  For  if  your  Universe  is  really  one,  this  is  what 
it  ought  to  do.  It  must  show  itself  capable  of  producing, 
not  mind  in  the  abstract,  but  those  concrete  operations 


100  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

of  mind  which  Spinoza's  or  Haeckers  answer  to  the 
riddle  exhibits.  If  it  is  only  Spinoza  or  Haeckel  who 
provides  the  answer,  and  not  the  Universe  itself,  then 
you  are  no  Monist,  but  a  Dualist,  the  Universe  standing 
on  this  side  and  Spinoza  and  Haeckel  with  their  keys 
on  that ;  but  how  the  keys  came  to  fit  the  lock  will 
give  rise  to  a  new  riddle  several  degrees  harder  than  the 
old.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  scorn  such  incon- 
sistencies and  boldly  profess  your  willingness  to  regard 
Haeckel  and  his  works  as  facts,  organically  related  with 
all  other  facts  to  one  another  and  to  the  whole,  qualifying 
by  their  presence  the  meaning  of  everything  else  and 
being  qualified  in  return,  then  there  is  no  escaping  the 
conclusion  that  it  is  the  Universe  itself  by  means  of 
Haeckel,  and  not  Haeckel  apart  from  the  Universe, 
which  answers  its  own  riddles  in  the  systematic  and 
intelligent,  manner  of  the  German  biologist.  And  that 
discovery  will  send  you  further  than  Haeckel  in  search 
of  light.  For,  as  we  have  said,  what  precisely  we  want 
to  know  is  not  in  general  how  matter  can  evolve  in- 
telligence but  how  the  Universe  comes,  first,  to  present 
itself  as  this  riddle  and  then  to  evolve  this  answer.  In 
other  words,  Haeckel  will  not  explain  the  Universe  until 
he  has  shown  how  the  Universe  explains  him. 

To  say  so  much  is  but  to  repeat  a  doctrine  with 
which  every  student  of  the  first  chapter  of  St  John's 
Gospel  is  familiar.  The  Monist,  of  whatever  com- 
plexion, who,  consistently  with  his  principles,  casts 
his  own  philosophy  back  into  the  arms  of  the  Universe 
he  claims  to  interpret,  is  a  confessor  of  the  Eternal 
Word.  It  is  the  Logos  which  speaks  through  him: 
and  he  is  a  revealer  of  the  truth  just  in  so  far  as  he 
is  also  an  element  in  the  truth  to  be  revealed.     What 


THE   UNIVERSE   AS   PHILOSOPHER  101 

he  says  about  the  Whole  would  be  a  meaningless  story 
were  it  not  read  in  the  light  of  what  the  Whole  says 
about  him:  save  as  himself  explained  by  the  system 
he  would  explain  he  is  nothing,  and  his  point  of  view 
is  nowhere.  At  first  he  seems  to  himself  to  be  looking 
out,  from  his  private  window,  upon  the  AU-of-Things, 
a  mere  spectator  of  the  scene  before  him:  but  it  is 
the  light  of  the  All  streaming  in  through  the  window 
that  renders  his  speculation  possible  and  reminds  him 
that  he  knows  only  because  he  is  known.  At  this 
point  philosophy  begins.  The  philosophic  ego,  severed 
from  his  context,  and  claiming  in  that  severance  to 
interpret  the  context  from  which  he  is  torn,  is  now 
seen  to  be  a  pure  abstraction,  ineffectual  as  any  ghost. 
It  is  of  the  essence  of  mind  that  it  embraces  itself 
within  the  sphere  of  its  own  inquiries,  and  if  the  cost 
of  admitting  this  is  to  introduce  a  paradox  into  every 
philosophical  problem,  the  penalty  of  neglecting  it  is 
to  render  philosophy  dumb. 

Indeed,  the  above  doctrine,  far  from  being  novel,^ 
can  claim  a  witness  wherever  Religion  and  reflective 
Conscience  have  found  a  voice.  "  Thus  saith  the  Lord  " 
is  ever  the  word  of  the  Prophet:  "Thus  thinks  the 
Whole  "  is  but  the  deeper  implication  of  the  Prophet's 
cry.  "  Our  wills  are  ours  to  make  them  Thine  "  ;  and 
Thought  is  ours  for  no  other  end.^     Were  the  second 

^  Students  of  Schelling,  and  of  the  transition  to  Hegel,  are  not 
likely  to  think  it  novel. 

2  O  Light  that  followest  all  my  way, 
I  yield  my  flickering  torch  to  Thee  ; 
My  heart  restores  its  borrowed  ray. 
That  in  Thy  sunshine's  blaze  its  day 
May  brighter,  fairer  be. 

Scottish  Hymnal. 


102  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

false,  the  first  could  not  be  true.  Thought,  like 
morality,  must  lose  in  order  to  find ;  and  in  surrendering 
her  insight  to  the  A  U-of- Things,  she  achieves  on  lighter 
terms  a  victory  won  in  other  spheres  at  the  cost  of 
agony  and  bloody  sweat.  We  are  not  here  straining 
after  far-fetched  and  unheard-of  things  ;  we  are  repeat- 
ing our  daily  confessions  and  moving  among  our  most 
familiar  thoughts.  With  impeded  utterance  and  with 
a  slightly  foreign  accent,  philosophy  is  here  speaking 
the  language  which  ever  flows  from  the  lips  of  Religion 
with  the  easy  music  of  a  mother-tongue.  What  is  far 
stranger  than  this  doctrine  is  the  spectacle  of  devout 
thinkers  fiercely  contending  for  subjective  interests 
from  which  Christian  men  seek  deliverance  every  time 
they  repeat  the  Lord's  Prayer.  For  the  meaning  of 
things  is  no  more  viy  discovery  than  the  moral  order 
is  my  creation,  and  the  philosopher  who  discerns  this 
and  proclaims  it  deserves  no  harder  name  than  the 
saint  who  cries  "  I'hy  will  be  done." 

The  habitual  neglect  of  these  considerations  by 
Monistic  thinkers  is  probably  due  to  a  one-sided 
tendency  in  the  Western  mind  to  assert  the  Right 
of  Private  Judgment — a  right  specially  dear  to  the 
Goths  and  supported  by  the  whole  group  of  powerful 
instincts  which  gather  round  the  concept  of  posses- 
sion. But  if  the  foregoing  exposition  is  sound,  the 
first  duty  of  a  consistent  Monist  is  to  abandon  the 
assertion  of  this  right  in  its  exclusive  form.  He 
must,  from  the  outset,  surrender  the  claim  that 
his  thoughts,  views,  or  beliefs  are  exclusively  his 
own.  If  they  are  his,  that  is  only  because  they  are 
also  Another's.  This  in  general  he  is  ready  enough  to 
do  ;  but  the  full  significance  of  his  surrender  will  not 


THE   UNIVERSE   AS  PHILOSOPHER  103 

dawn  upon  him  until  he  has  learnt  to  include  within  it, 
not  his  thought  in  the  abstract,  but  that  particular 
thought  of  his  which  achieves  this  final  interpretation 
of  the  world — in  brief,  the  Monistic  philosophy  itself. 
By  hypothesis  he  has  no  status,  as  a  being  apart,  from 
which  to  form  an  outside  opinion  of  the  Whole.  His 
views  of  the  Whole  are  also  the  Whole's  views  of  itself. 
It  follows  that  every  form  of  Monism  implies  that  the 
Universe  is  self-conscious.  No  ultimate  distinction  can 
be  drawn  between  what  you,  the  philosopher,  think  of 
the  world  and  what  the  world  through  you  thinks  of 
itself.  In  no  wise  do  you  escape  this  conclusion  by 
holding  "mechanical"  or  "materialistic  views"  of 
Nature :  for,  if  your  Monism  is  consistent,  the  assertion 
on  your  part  "  It  is  a  machine,"  is  just  the  assertion  on 
its  part,  "  /  ajn  a  machine."  Whatever  you  say  "  It  is," 
it  says  "  I  am."  Your  only  escape  is  to  constitute  your- 
self an  outsider,  or,  which  is  the  same  thing,  an  un- 
related part  of  the  Whole — in  other  words,  abandon 
your  Monism  altogether.  Spinoza  proclaimed  this  over 
and  over  again  :  in  the  deepest  sense  it  is  the  theme  of 
the  Ethic.  "  The  intellectual  love  of  the  mind  towards 
God  is  the  very  love  wherewith  God  loves  Himself."^ 
The  principle  underlying  this  statement  compels  the 
Monist  to  translate  every  doctrine  of  reality  from  the 
form  "  It  is  "  into  the  form  "  I  am."^ 

To    every   Monist,   one  would    suppose,   the    most 

1  Ethic,  pt.  5,  prop,  xxxvi. 

2  Religion  also,  it  may  be  added,  has  but  a  secondary  concern  with 
the  proposition  '^It  (or  he)  is  "  :  its  main  concern  is  with  '^  Thou  art." 
A  demonstration  of  the  existence  of  God,  in  the  third  person^  would 
have  no  value  for  religion  unless  it  were  susceptible  of  translation  into 
the  second. 


104  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

thought-compelling  fact  of  the  Universe  is  the  continual 
effort  it  seems  to  be  making  to  get  its  own  nature 
expressed.  This  effort  he  will  see  reflected  in  every 
system  of  philosophy  the  wide  world  over.  So  far  as 
these  systems  are  true  he  will  regard  them  as  the  self- 
confessions  of  Reality.  But  here  a  sore  difficulty 
awaits  him,  for  these  self-confessions  of  Reality  seem 
to  be  exceedingly  various  as  to  their  import,  incon- 
sistent, and  even  contradictory.  If  some  are  true,  it 
would  appear  that  others  cannot  be  free  from  error. 
And  precisely  the  same  line  of  argument  which  makes 
the  Universe  responsible  for  the  true  makes  it  respons- 
ible also  for  the  false.  No  serious  Monist  needs  to  be 
reminded  that  the  gravest  difficulties  the  system  has  to 
encounter  are  precisely  those  which  gather  round  the 
origin  of  error.  These  difficulties  come  to  a  head  when 
we  remember  that  among  the  errors  for  which  the 
AU-of- Things  is  accountable,  are  those  which  attach 
to  its  own  most  intimate  self-confessions  in  the  form 
of  philosophy.  If  certain  systems,  regarded  as  true, 
represent  the  effort  of  the  Whole  to  explain  itself,  how 
can  we  resist  the  conclusion  that  other  systems  regarded 
as  false  reveal  the  Whole  in  the  act  of  belying  its  own 
character  ? 

It  may  be  said  that  to  speak  of  "  true  "  and  "  false  " 
in  this  connection  is  to  evince  a  parti  pris.  Let  us  be 
content,  then,  with  the  fact  that  the  Universe,  monisti- 
cally  regarded,  gives  birth  to  a  series  of  differing 
interpretations  of  its  own  nature.  It  would  surely 
be  hard  to  find  any  single  fact  which  at  first  sight 
gives  greater  encouragement  to  a  pluralistic  view  of 
Reality,  and  one  is  surprised  that  Pluralists  have  not 
made  better  use  of  its  support.      The  co-presence  in 


11  UNIVLH^ITY   // 
^^^^^iSlSi^IVERSE   AS   PHILOSOPHER  105 

Reality  of  differing  interpretations  of  Reality  would 
seem  to  be  fatal  to  the  hypothesis  that  Reality  is  the 
expression  of  Unitary  Mind.  If  Nature  is  one,  she 
surely  cannot  be  simultaneously  in  two,  or  twenty, 
minds  about  her  own  constitution.  How  is  it  possible 
to  read  the  Monism  of  Spinoza,  the  Dualism  of  Mar- 
tineau,  the  Pluralism  of  James,  as  the  self-confessions 
of  a  Single  Being  ? 

The   consideration   of  this   difficulty  will  form   the 
subject  of  the  next  essay. 


v.— THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

The  previous  essay  concluded  with  an  undertaking, 
perhaps  rashly  given,  to  entertain  a  problem  the  state- 
ment of  which  is  prophetic  of  difficulty.  The  argument 
professed  to  lead  up  to  the  conception  of  philosophy  as 
one  among  the  many  Self-confessions  of  the  Whole. 
Now,  the  least  we  can  demand  of  a  world  which  tells  its 
own  story  is  that  the  story  shall  be  consistent  with  itself. 
The  voice  that  contradicts  itself  cannot,  it  would  seem, 
be  the  voice  of  God  ;  the  philosophy  that  says  and  unsays, 
that  affirms  and  denies  the  same  thing,  is  no  part  of  a 
Divine  Revelation.  This,  however,  is  precisely  what 
philosophy  appears  to  do.  One  philosopher  grounds 
existence  on  matter,  another  on  spirit ;  one  exhibits 
evolution  as  the  progressive  realisation  of  a  moral  ideal, 
another  finds  evolution  unmoral ;  one  proclaims  unity, 
another  treats  unity  as  a  meaningless  term.  In  the  face 
of  such  contrariety,  how  shall  we  treat  the  assertion 
that  philosophy  is  a  Self-revelation  of  Unitary  Being  ? 

The  work  of  philosophy,  like  that  of  its  kindred^ 
occupation  charity,  begins  —  and  ends  —  at  home. 
Whatever  ultimate  truth  or  law  the  philosopher  may 
discover,  it  is  obvious  that  the  process  of  discovery  is 
itself  subject  to  the  law  or  truth   discovered.      The 

1  See  Fichte,  The  Way  of  the  Blessed  Life. 

106 


THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT       107 

denial  of  this  means  that  the  law  or  truth  is  not 
ultimate.  Thus  Mr  Joachim  has  written  an  extremely- 
able  defence  of  the  "coherence"  theory  of  Truth. 
Does  Mr  Joachim's  defence  of  the  theory  itself  con- 
form to  the  theory  defended  ?  I  am  far  from  saying  it 
does  not:  I  suggest  only  that,  when  "Truth"  is  the 
subject,  conformity  to  the  theory  defended  is  essen- 
tial to  the  validity  of  the  defence.  Again,  in  the 
field  of  speculative  ethics  there  are  theories  of  the 
Moral  End  (one  need  not  name  them)  in  the  con- 
struction of  which  the  philosopher  shows  no  sign  of 
being  himself  subject  to  any  moral  end  whatsoever. 
There  are  others  which,  in  the  endeavour  to  give 
morality  an  assured  scientific  basis,  let  so  many  danger- 
ous secrets  out  of  the  bag  as  to  completely  demoralise 
any  person  who  accepts  their  final  results.  No  depart- 
ment of  his  business  can  vie  with  that  of  ethics  in  the 
number  of  temptations  it  offers  the  philosopher  to 
detach  himself  from  the  moral  order  he  is  considering, 
and  to  evoke  a  set  of  ethical  principles  to  which  his  own 
manual  or  treatise  can  only  be  regarded  as  one  flagrant 
act  of  disobedience.  And  in  general,  any  system  of 
thought  which  fails  to  illustrate  its  own  principles  in 
the  very  process  by  which  those  principles  are  reached 
stands  self-condemned.  The  philosophy  which  merely 
legislates  for  its  "  other  "  is  worth  little :  that  alone  will 
stand  secure  which  submits  to  be  tested  by  its  own 
standards  and  bows  its  neck  under  the  yoke  itself  has 
set  up.  The  consciousness  of  subjection  to  its  own 
results  is  the  breath  of  the  nostrils  of  speculative 
thought.  Nowhere  else  is  the  rule  of  "  Practise  what 
you  preach"  so  stringent;  and  nowhere  else  is  that 
rule    treated   with    more    disdain.       How    great    the 


108       THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

temptation  is  to  lay  down  a  law  which  one  violates  in 
the  very  act  of  laying  it  down,  few  persons  who  climb 
the  slippery  heights  of  speculation  can  long  remain 
unaware.  Here,  for  example,  is  a  system  which  pro- 
claims the  rule  of  universals,  and  itself  remains  a 
particular  outside  their  sway.  Here  is  one  which  places 
an  everlasting  gulf  between  subject  and  object,  but  in 
so  doing  bridges  the  gulf  with  its  own  arms,  and  is 
itself  that  very  unity  which  it  declares  to  be  impossible. 
Here  is  one  which  teaches  that  man  is  free,  on  the 
ground  that  he  is  compelled  to  take  that  view,  and 
therefore  not  free  to  take  any  other.  Here  is  one  which 
announces  determination,  but  pauses  not  to  consider 
that  determination  loses  its  sting  where  it  has  thus  been 
found  out.  Here  is  one  which  gives  the  Will  priority 
over  Reason,  but  does  so  by  a  process  which  is 
apparently  an  attempt  to  reason,  and  not  to  will,  us 
out  of  the  opposite  opinion. 

To  interpret  experience  is  to  change  it.  Of  all  the 
errors  which  have  been  suifered  to  creep  in  through  the 
back-doors  of  the  towers  of  speculation,  I  give  the  place 
of  chief  malignancy  to  the  notion  that  experience  is  a 
kind  of  tailor's  block,  which,  having  already  displayed 
a  hundred  different  suits  in  the  shop  window,  remains 
on  hand  for  the  display  of  as  many  more.  To  suppose 
that  any  physical  or  psychical  object  remains  passive 
under  our  effort  to  understand  it,  and  is  the  same 
when  understood  that  it  was  before,  is  as  though  one 
were  to  say  that  the  bacon  which  a  man  eats  for  his 
breakfast  is  still  bacon  when  it  has  been  digested  and 
used  up  in  the  nourishment  of  his  brain.  An  inter- 
pretation is  a  kind  of  alchemy  which,  when  applied  to 
any  object,  transforms  its  character  as  a  thing  to  be 


THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT  109 

understood.  The  object  grows  in  and  with  our  know- 
ledge of  it ;  and  this  growth  of  the  object  is  no 
mechanical  addition  of  moments,  no  mere  loading  of 
the  tailor's  block  with  successive  overcoats  each  a  size 
bigger  than  its  predecessor,  but  an  organic  process  as 
genuinely  such  as  the  growth  of  an  animal  body.  The 
results  of  each  stage  become  the  raw  material  of  the 
stage  following,  not  to  be  lost  there  nor  destroyed, 
but  to  suffer  a  process  of  transubstantiation.  A  fact 
understood  bears  the  same  relation  to  the  fact  not 
understood,  both  as  to  its  sameness  and  difference,  as 
the  man  bears  to  the  boy. 

This,  I  imagine,  will  not  be  seriously  disputed. 
Philosophers  are  ready  enough  to  proclaim  it — in 
regard  to  everybody's  business  but  their  own.  In  the 
walks  of  physical  science  illustrative  instances  might  be 
gathered  by  the  handful.  When,  however,  we  enter 
those  realms  of  speculative  philosophy  where  this 
truth  was  born,  and  whence  it  has  been  announced, 
we  encounter  an  order  of  "  facts "  to  which  it  has 
seldom  been  applied.  The  most  striking  examples 
are,  as  I  have  said,  in  the  field  of  ethical  thought. 
It  is  surprising  that  John  Mill,  for  instance,  having 
explained  the  love  of  virtue  as  the  love  of  pleasure  in 
disguise,  does  not  seem  to  have  realised  the  effect  of 
such  a  theory  upon  any  person  who  should  happen  to 
close  with  it.  Mill  seems  to  have  assumed  that  the 
love  of  virtue,  confronted  by  this  explanation  of  itself, 
would  remain  passive  under  the  operation,  and  retain 
the  place  and  character  it  had  before.  Plainly  it  would 
do  no  such  thing.  The  moment  I  understand  that 
what  I  am  really  aiming  at  is  not  virtue,  as  I  pre- 
viously supposed,  but  pleasure,  all  my  delusions  about 


110  THE   ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

the  supereminence  of  virtue  will  vanish,  and  the  love 
of  virtue  will,  if  I  am  true  to  my  convictions,  give 
place  to  an  entirely  different  order  of  desire.  I  dreamt 
that  I  was  in  a  palace :  you  have  now  awakened  me 
to  the  truth  that  I  am  in  a  stye ;  and  being  awake 
you  cannot  expect  me,  as  a  rational  being,  to  play  at 
believing  that  my  acorns  are  pearls  and  my  wash 
the  nectar  of  the  gods.  Assuming  Mill's  explanation 
of  the  love  of  virtue  to  be  true,  my  only  chance  of 
retaining  that  love  is  to  remain  in  total  ignorance 
of  the  explanation.  Similarly,  Mr  Sidgwick  bases  a 
loftier  theory  on  the  "reasonableness  of  Egoism." 
But  a  little  reflection  will  disclose  the  interesting  fact 
that  (again  assuming  Mr  Sidgwick's  system  to  be  true) 
the  only  egoists  whose  egoism  would  be  reasonable  are 
those  who  know  nothing  and  suspect  nothing  of  the 
conclusions  to  which  Mr  Sidgwick  is  leading  them. 
No  sooner  do  these  unfortunate  egoists  close  with 
Mr  Sidgwick's  conclusion,  and  look  upon  themselves 
under  the  searchlight  of  his  Rational  Utilitarianism, 
than  they  discover  that  nothing  is  more  unreasonable 
than  egoism :  whereupon  the  basis  of  the  theory  will 
vanish  entire.  It  is  certainly  reasonable  to  be  an  egoist 
provided  you  know  no  better ;  but  such  blissful  ignor- 
ance the  Methods  of  Ethics  has  rendered  impossible ; 
so  that  now  the  position  of  the  reasonable  egoist  be- 
comes embarrassing  to  the  last  degree.  He  must 
either  give  up  his  egoism,  and  so  leave  Mr  Sidgwick 
without  a  base  of  operations ;  or  he  must  stick  to  his 
egoism  and  defy  Mr  Sidgwick.^ 

Yet  another  instance  is  afforded  by  the  controversy 
about    the    Freedom    of   the    Will.     The  process   of 

1  Other  instances  are  given  in  the  essay  on  "Self-defeating  Theories." 


THE   ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT  111 

proving  the  Will  to  be  free  is  itself  an  instance  of  the 
exercise  of  Will.  On  the  theory  of  the  organic  unity  of 
Reason  and  Will,  which  no  competent  psychologist  will 
deny,  it  is  obvious  that  the  activity  of  a  philosopher 
constructing  a  theory  of  moral  freedom  is  as  plain  an 
instance  of  the  operations  of  Will  as  that  afforded  by  any 
kind  of  human  activity  whatsoever — as  plain  or  perhaps 
plainer.  To  those  who  have  made  the  attempt  it  will 
be  evident  enough  that  the  realm  of  such  inquiries  is  a 
realm  of  effort  through  and  through,  and  of  effort  under 
law.  Hence,  whatever  theory  of  moral  responsibility 
you  set  up  for  conscious  activity  in  general  must  apply 
to  your  own  activity  in  setting  up  the  theory,  unless 
you  would  maintain  the  convenient  but  absurd  proposi- 
tion that  as  a  philosopher  you  are  exempt  from  the  rule 
to  which  you  are  subject  as  a  man. 

Now  if  a  man's  views  as  to  the  nature  of  the  Will  are 
determined  for  him  by  logical  necessities  over  which  he 
has  no  control ;  if,  that  is  to  say,  he  can  allege  that 
Truth  compels  him  to  hold  either  this  theory  or  that, 
then  it  must  be  remembered  that  this  plea  of  com- 
pulsion by  Truth  is  open  equally  to  the  honest  fatalist 
as  to  the  honest  libertarian  ;  and  it  is  certain  that  the 
Truth  which  has  compelled  the  man  to  adopt  the  one 
theory,  say  fatalism,  cannot  condemn  him  for  conduct- 
ing his  life  accordingly,  nor  hold  him  responsible  for  not 
conducting  it  as  those  other  men  do  whom  Truth  has 
equally  compelled  to  believe  in  free-will.  Fatalism  and 
free-will  do  not  represent  two  ways  of  dealing  with 
the  same  moral  situation,  which  remains  passive  and 
unaffected  whether  we  interpret  it  in  one  way  or  the 
other :  they  represent  two  entirely  different  moral 
situations,  each  of  which  becomes  what  it  is  precisely 


112  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

because  we  understand  it  in  this  way  rather  than  that. 
My  theory  of  the  Will  profoundly  influences  my  moral 
world.  It  follows  that  the  construction  of  a  theory  of 
responsibility  itself  represents  the  supreme  responsibility 
the  human  agent  is  capable  of  incurring,  inasmuch  as 
the  nature  of  such  a  theory  inevitably  determines  the 
attitude  of  all  who  accept  it  to  all  responsibilities  what- 
soever. A  doctrine  of  freedom,  therefore,  which  proves 
me  morally  free  in  regard  to  other  activities,  but  cannot 
prove  me  free,  in  the  same  sense,  in  regard  to  each  and 
all  the  steps  by  which  I  have  reached  that  conclusion, 
has  failed  of  its  purpose.  But  how  many  of  the  apologies 
for  free-will  will  stand  that  test  ? 

It  is  not,  however,  in  regard  to  such  special  problems 
as  those  noticed  above  that  the  constitutive  function  of 
interpretation  is  most  fully  operative.  The  function  is 
seen  at  its  maximum  activity  when  we  pass  to  that  final 
view  of  things  which  metaphysic  attempts.  Now,  the 
work  of  metaphysic  is  that  of  building  a  universe 
for  thought  Whosoever  offers  me  a  final  philosophy 
offers  me  a  world.  To  accept  the  view,  for  instance, 
that  the  world  is  the  manifestation  of  a  good  Spirit, 
or  again  of  an  unconscious  Will,  is  to  accept  a 
principle  according  to  which  the  whole  length  and 
breadth  of  my  thinking  must  henceforth  be  con- 
stituted and  to  which  it  must  be  conformed.  The 
function  of  such  a  principle  is  essentially  creative: 
whatsoever  concept  it  touches,  in  the  realm  of  psy- 
chology or  of  morals  or  elsewhere,  is  changed  as  if  by 
magic  to  a  new  thing.  Nothing  is  left  as  it  was  before. 
The  broad  fact  of  the  world  becomes  just  such  a  fact  as 
the  principle  makes  it,  and  every  one  of  my  relations  to 
that  fact  becomes  charged  with  a  corresponding  meaning. 


THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT  113 

To  me,  holding  either  one  of  these  doctrines,  nothing  is 
what  it  would  be  if  I  held  the  other.  Neither  the  stars 
in  their  courses,  nor  the  moral  law  in  the  heart ;  neither 
God,  my  neighbour,  nor  myself  retains  the  meaning 
under  the  second  which  each  holds  under  the  first.  All 
are  transformed ;  and  in  so  far  as  I  may  forsake  either 
of  these  philosophies  for  the  other  or  for  a  third  or  a 
hundredth,  the  possibility  of  a  fresh  transfiguration  of 
the  whole  world  of  thought  is  ever  before  me. 

So  long,  therefore,  as  thought  is  growing,  all  meanings 
grow  with  it.  And  as  there  is  no  such  thing  as  fixed, 
static,  and  final  thought,  so  from  the  bare  attempt  to 
find  a  fixed  formula  we  learn  that  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  a  static  and  final  world.  The  moral  law  even  is 
no  more  "  stablished  for  ever  "  than  the  mountains  with 
which  it  has  been  compared.  Nor  is  the  case  altered 
one  whit  if  I  adopt  the  pragmatic  contention  that  a 
principle  of  unity  is  not  to  be  found,  that  the  world  will 
submit  to  no  kind  of  comprehensive  synthesis.  For 
those  who  assert  the  principle  of  unity  and  for  those 
who  deny  it  the  position  is  the  same.  The  Pragmatist 
is  no  less  a  world-builder  than  the  Kantian.  His 
philosophy  is  the  offer  of  a  new  kind  of  world — the 
world  of  adventure — a  world  as  strongly  characterised, 
as  sharply  differentiated  from  others,  as  it  would  be  if 
informed  by  any  attributes  which  a  rigid  rationalism 
could  confer.  If  you  want  a  non-creative  philosophy, 
you  will  not  get  it  by  exchanging  Kant  for  James, 
Hegel  for  Spencer.  When  you  have  made  the  ex- 
change you  will  find  that  you  have  not  escaped  from 
the  necessity  of  constituting  your  world,  but  merely 
given  up  one  way  of  constituting  it  in  favour  of  another. 

The  passage  from  the  one   system  to  the  other  is   a 

8 


114  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

stage  in  the  evolution  of  the  thought-process :  it  is 
one  more  illustration  of  the  endless  transformations  to 
which  the  universe  is  subject  under  the  alchemy  of 
interpretation. 

By  no  great  thinker  has  this  truth  been  missed, 
though  often  forgotten,  and  those  who  are  not  among 
the  greatest  can  seldom  overlook  it  for  long.  How  else 
shall  we  explain  the  ardour,  the  eagerness,  the  moral 
tension,  the  sense  of  a  burden  almost  too  great  to  be 
borne,  which,  easily  discernible  between  the  lines  of  all 
earnest  thinking,  betray  the  thinker  in  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  a  tremendous  responsibility  ?  Why  so  much 
in  earnest,  we  may  well  ask,  if  all  you  are  doing  is  to 
take  a  reproduction  of  the  world  which  makes  no 
difference  to  the  thing  reproduced  ?  It  is  with  the 
thing  and  not  with  your  reproduction  that  life  has  to 
do.  Cannot  Reality  be  trusted  to  take  care  of  itself? 
If  systems  of  philosophy  are  to  be  treated  as  so  many 
photographs  of  Reality,  which,  needing  not  their  aid, 
effectually  asserts  its  own  principles  and  declares  its 
own  nature  independently  of  them,  then  it  must  be 
confessed  that,  of  all  the  strange  exhibitions  man  has 
made  of  himself  before  high  heaven,  his  attempts  to 
interpret  the  universe  or  to  prove  it  non-interpretable 
are  the  masterpiece. 

At  this  point  in  the  discussion  we  must  compare^ the 
result  of  the  present  argument  with  that  which  was 
offered  at  the  conclusion  of  the  former  essay.  On  the 
comparison  of  those  results  the  possibility  of  further 
progress  depends.  Putting  them  side  by  side,  they 
appear  to  be  contradictions.  In  the  first  argument  the 
conclusion  was  that  interpretations  of  the  All-of-Things 


THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT  115 

proceed  from  that  Reality  which  they  profess  to  inter- 
pret ;  that  to  explain  the  world  is,  for  anyone  who 
regards  himself  as  organically  one  with  the  world,  to 
proclaim  the  ability  of  the  world  to  explain  itself, — thus 
attributing  to  the  All-of-Things  precisely  that  kind  and 
degree  of  intelligence  of  which  the  interpreter's  own  work 
is  the  manifestation.  On  this  view  systems  of  phil- 
osophy are  so  many  self-confessions  of  Ultimate  Reality, 
whether  we  call  this  God  or  by  any  other  name.  In 
the  second  argument  just  offered,  we  reach  the  opposite 
conclusion.  Instead  of  the  universe  creating  its  own 
interpretation,  we  now  see  the  interpretation  creating 
the  universe.  In  the  first  case  we  were  led  to  see  that 
the  individual  thinker,  when  he  reflects  on  the  part  he 
is  playing,  and  catches  himself  in  the  very  act  of  trying 
to  solve  the  riddle  of  the  universe,  finds  himself  com- 
pelled to  surrender  the  torch,  by  the  light  of  which  he 
is  working,  to  that  universe  whose  riddles  he  is  trying 
to  solve.  So  then  it  would  appear  that  the  individual 
thinker  is  completely  swallowed  up  in  the  universal, 
and  that  no  further  proceedings  are  possible  by  which 
the  universal  may  be  compelled  to  disgorge  him. 

But  now  all  this  has  been  reversed.  In  flat  contradic- 
tion, as  it  would  seem,  to  what  has  been  before  advanced, 
we  have  made  the  thinker  responsible  for  the  world, 
instead  of  making  the  world  responsible  for  him.  We 
have  given  a  charter  for  world-building  to  an  indefinite 
number  of  persons  who  may  happen  to  be  inclined  to 
construct  systems  of  philosophy.  We  have  said  that  to 
interpret  experience  is  to  control  it,  i.e.  to  determine 
its  conceptual  form,  to  make  it  mean  what  it  does 
mean,  and  therefore  to  create  a  world  of  experience  for 
thought.     Here,  then,  the  individual  thinker  recovers 


116  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

his  rights — recovers  them  with  a  vengeance,  for  he  gets 
back  more  than  he  wants.  And  here  again  there  is  no 
logical  possibihty  of  escaping  the  conclusion  we  have 
reached.  If  you  insist  on  reading  your  experience  ex- 
clusively from  that  end  of  it  at  which  the  experient 
stands,  you  will  find  that  the  philosophy  at  which  you 
finally  arrive  actually  creates  for  you  the  world  you  are 
investigating,  and  in  so  doing  charges  that  world  with 
all  the  problems  and  all  the  answers  your  philosophy 
professes  to  handle.  We  stand,  therefore,  in  the 
presence  of  a  situation  which  has  all  the  characteristics 
of  a  fierce  antinomy.  Either  conclusion  has  only  to 
be  stated  to  evoke  the  resistance  of  the  other.  Yet 
both  conclusions  follow  inevitably  from  certain  assump- 
tions ;  and  the  assumptions  from  which  they  follow  are 
of  such  a  kind  that  we  cannot  avoid  making  them  in 
the  ordinary  process  of  thought. 

Nothing  can  be  further  from  the  aim  of  the  present 
writer  than  to  disguise  the  intensity  of  this  contradic- 
tion. Rather  his  aim  is  to  bring  the  contradiction 
into  the  full  light  of  day  and  to  set  it  up,  where  it 
is  seldom  seen,  by  the  main  entrance  to  the  City  of 
Speculation.  The  statement  of  this  antinomy  is  of 
course  nothing  new ;  but  it  is  not  usually  recognised 
that  the  seat  of  the  opposition  is  in  the  philosophic 
consciousness  itself.  We  find  it  in  knowledge,  and 
we  propound  a  theory  of  knowledge  to  solve  it : 
but  what  we  may  easily  overlook — for  no  less  a 
thinker  than  Kant  overlooked  it — is  that  in  the  theory 
of  knowledge  so  propounded  the  antinomy  turns  up 
again  in  a  conflict  of  opposites  yet  more  intense.  Not 
until  we  pass  from  the  sphere  of  voyjaus  and  enter  that 
of  p6rj(rLsj^or)(T€a)s  do  we  encounter  the  antithesis  in  the 


THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT  117 

extremest  form,  and  grasp  the  principle  in  which,  if  at 
all,  reconciliation  may  be  found.  In  other  words,  the 
only  hope  for  a  solution  of  this  problem  lies  with  that 
philosophy  which  begins  at  home. 

It  is  plain  that  the  world  may  be  read  in  two  ways. 
I  have  sought  to  indicate  both  ways  in  these  essays ; 
and  we  have  seen  that  each  reading  contradicts  the 
other.  But  the  active  principle  which  so  reads  the 
world  must  not  be  confused  with  what  is  read  ;  and  the 
reader  must  not  be  forgotten  in  the  reading.  If  we  can 
catch  ourselves  in  the  act  of  discovering  the  contradic- 
tion, we  shall  perceive  that  the  conflicting  elements 
stand  over  against  one  another  just  because  they  are 
so  held  by  the  mind.  The  contradiction  in  which  we 
are  all  but  finally  involved  is  within  us.  By  means  of 
this  deeper  unity,  and  because  mind  is  in  possession 
of  it,  we  may  be  able  to  grasp  the  truth  that  the 
two  processes  of  thought  we  have  considered,  each 
leading  to  an  opposite  conclusion  to  that  of  the  other, 
are  not  two  but  the  same,  differing  only  as  it  is  read 
from  left  to  right  or  right  to  left.  The  contradiction 
is  born  from  the  very  logic  which  tries  to  deal  with 
the  situation.  As  the  two  ends  of  a  straight  line  are 
extreme  opposites  because  it  is  the  same  straight  line 
of  which  they  are  the  opposing  ends,  so  the  negation 
of  our  first  position  by  the  second,  or  our  second  by 
the  first,  reveals  to  us  that  it  is  only  a  line  that  we 
are  dealing  with.  This  revelation,  as  we  have  now 
to  show,  is  the  philosophic  consciousness  itself,  a  true 
meeting-ground  of  God  and  man,  in  which  the  whole 
work  of  thought  is  suffused  by  the  light  of  a  higher 
meaning  indicated,  but  never  fully  expressed,  bv  the 
language  of  religion. 


118  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

The  results  of  human  speculation  are  not  a  mere 
aggregate  of  inconsistent  systems.  The  history  of 
philosophy  is  the  exhibition  of  a  single  life  continuous 
with  itself  through  the  ages.  In  tracing  the  process 
of  this  life  backwards  from  the  mystical  synthesis  by 
which  the  soul  loses  and  finds  itself  in  God  to  the 
most  rudimentary  forms  of  knowledge,  we  follow  in 
an  inverse  order  the  steps  of  the  process  of  evolution 
in  the  external  world.  And  again,  in  connecting  one 
system  of  philosophy  with  another  we  shall  find 
ourselves  dealing  with  an  organic  whole,  the  parts  of 
which,  like  the  parts  of  a  living  body,  are  so  related  to 
one  another  that  the  withdrawal  of  any  one  of  them, 
far  from  leaving  the  others  more  intelligible  by  its 
absence,  has  the  immediate  effect  of  weakening  the 
vital  principle  in  virtue  of  which  all  the  systems  have 
their  being.  So  closely  knit  is  the  organism  of  the 
world's  thinking  that  the  deletion  of  any  one  of  its 
members  would  threaten  the  life  of  the  whole.  A 
universe  which  is  tolerant  of  the  spiritual  interpretation 
cannot  dispense  with  the  sceptical ;  just  as,  in  the 
absence  of  the  spiritual,  there  is  nothing  for  the  sceptic 
to  doubt.  The  very  affirmation  of  God  is  an  unthink- 
able contradiction  in  a  world  which  provides  no  room 
for  His  denial ;  and  the  sceptical  denial,  when  it  comes, 
always  turns  out  to  be  undertaken  in  the  interests  of 
a  positive  Better  which  presupposes  a  positive  Best. 
This  point  attained — and  I  freely  admit  that  it  is  not 
easy :  but  what  deep  truth  is  ? — a  heavy  burden  will 
fall  from  the  shoulders  of  thought.  The  problem  with 
which  we  set  out,  that  of  understanding  diversity  in 
the  self-confessing  of  the  Supreme,  will  pass  out  of 
sight.     The  universe  stands  no  longer  chargeable  with 


THE  ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT  119 

self-stultification  in  the  multiplicity  of  its  utterances. 
These  utterances  are  the  self-revelations  of  one  reality. 
In  their  diversity  they  are  as  the  single  words  of  a 
sentence,  meaningless  till  we  read  into  them  the  one 
meaning  which  the  sentence  conveys :  they  are  as  the 
scenes  of  a  drama,  which  tell  us  nothing  when  torn 
from  their  context  in  the  action  of  the  play :  they  are 
as  the  organs  of  the  body,  which  live  and  die,  flourish 
and  perish,  in  the  unitary  life  of  the  system  to  which 
they  belong.  The  total  life  which  is  rich  enough  to 
require  the  tiger  as  well  as  the  good  Samaritan  for  its 
full  manifestation  requires  also  Nietzsche  as  well  as 
St  John,  the  Pragmatist  as  well  as  the  Kantian,  and 
Thomas  a  Kempis  as  well  as  James  Mill.^ 

The  philosophic  consciousness  has  received  but  scanty 
treatment  in  the  British  schools.  From  Plato  to 
Plotinus  its  rights  were  recognised  by  the  Greeks ; 
but  by  Plotinus  its  contents  were  refined  away  until 
it  came  to  mean  nothing  but  a  vision  of  pure  truth 
abstracted  from  all  contents  whatsoever.  Such  vision 
was  supposed  to  be  the  prerogative  of  God  and  godlike 
minds.  This  remains  the  standard  account  which  the 
philosophic  consciousness  gives  of  itself.  But  it  is 
evident  that  no  intelligent  consciousness  can  be  asso- 
ciated with  these  conditions.  To  be  aware  of  truth 
in  the  abstract,  i.e,  to  be  aware  of  truth  only  as  true, 
is  to  be  aware  of  nothing.  Intelligent  consciousness  is 
comparative  and  self-discriminating,  and  to  suppose  a 
higher  form  of  consciousness  to  which  this  does  not 
apply  is  to  speak  of  a  consciousness  which  is  not  con- 
scious. A  being  limited  to  any  single  experience, 
whether  of  truth  or  anything  else,  obviously  would  not 

1  See  Royce,  The  Spirit  of  Modem  Philosophy,  p.  14  seq. 


120  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

rise  even  to  the  level  of  knowing  that  anything  was  the 
matter  with  him  ;  unless,  indeed,  we  commit  the  atrocious 
fallacy  which  has  been  the  bane  of  psychology  by  sup- 
posing that  it  means  to  the  experient  himself  precisely 
what  it  means  to  us,  the  students  of  the  situation.  In 
the  same  way  the  common  talk  about  beings  who  enjoy 
an  unclouded  vision  of  the  truth  is  disguised  as  to  its 
absurdity  by  the  reservation  that  the  visionaries  in 
question,  in  addition  to  their  vision,  have  been  let  into 
the  secret  of  our  philosophy,  and  know  what  they 
are  after  as  well  as  we  do.  On  this  supposition,  no 
doubt  they  will  understand  the  blessedness  of  their 
condition  and  be  able  to  join  us  in  our  hymns.  But  it  is 
evident  that  in  this  way  we  have  altered  the  supposed 
character  of  their  experience.  The  simplicity  of  their 
contemplation  must  be  utterly  broken  up  before  they 
can  know,  as  we  know,  how  simple  their  contemplation 
is.  Until  we  thus  break  up  the  conditions  of  a  pure 
experience  of  the  truth,  the  consideration  of  such 
experience  cannot  be  proceeded  with  :  which  is  another 
form  of  saying  that  the  whole  undertaking  is  absurd. 
The  attempt  to  set  up  a  form  of  consciousness  occupied 
in  the  sole  contemplation  of  the  truth  does  not  carry  us 
upwards  to  God,  or  to  man  at  his  highest,  but  down- 
wards to  the  worm  and  the  amoeba. 

This  may  serve  as  a  warning  against  that  over-refine- 
ment in  the  conception  of  God  which  springs  from 
timidity  and  would  keep  him  sacrosanct  in  the  holiness 
of  exclusion,  lest  he  be  stained  by  contact  with  the 
finite.  The  disposition  to  refine  this  conception  is  natural 
and  strong:  hence  the  danger  lest  we  refine  it  away 
altogether.  In  the  whole  realm  of  thought  there  is  no 
partition  so  thin  as  that  which  divides  God  from  Nothing, 


THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT  121 

and  such  is  the  eagerness  of  the  soul  in  its  flight  God- 
wards  that  it  constantly  breaks  through  and  plunges  into 
the  abyss  on  the  other  side.  Certain  forms  of  Buddhism, 
and  Plotinus  among  the  mystics  of  the  West,  have  done 
this.  But  when  once  philosophy  has  reached  the  point 
of  conceiving  God  as  the  only  True,  or  the  truly  Real, 
the  moment  has  come  for  thought  to  return  upon  itself. 
Not  a  step  further  can  be  taken,  and  the  warning  to 
turn  back  is  instant  and  peremptory.  If  thought 
neglects  the  warning,  and  tries  to  refine  once  more  its 
last  refinement ;  if  thought  ever  seeks  to  rest  in  its  goal 
and  refuses  to  continue  the  endless  cycle  of  its  allotted 
movement,  it  passes  the  boundary  between  God  and 
nothing,  and  enters  the  realm  where  all  distinctions 
are  lost.  More  precisely,  we  are  helped  by  the  negative 
result  that  the  correlate  of  a  unitary  whole  is  not  the 
single  experience  of  the  Truth  as  true.  The  unity  of 
the  whole  must  not  be  taken  as  the  mere  equation  that 
the  whole  =  1,  nor  is  the  self-consciousness  of  such  a  whole 
—  "I  am  one "  —  exhausted  in  the  consciousness  that 
1  =  1.  To  be  conscious  of  self  at  all  I  must  be  conscious 
of  myself  in  many  forms,  including  that  of  not-self, 
and  conscious  of  my  own  variability  among  them.  It 
is  either  with  this  meaning  or  no  meaning  that  we 
attribute  self-consciousness  to  the  whole.  If  the  whole 
knows  itself  at  all,  it  knows  itself  as  many- wise  inter- 
preted and  determined ;  and  it  is  this  principle  that 
enables  us  to  regard  "the  Monism  of  Spinoza,  the 
Dualism  of  Martineau,  the  Pluralism  of  James,"  as  the 
self-confessions  of  a  Single  Being. 

Thus  even  within  the  single  field  of  the  attribute  of 
Thought  we  find  that  same  diversity  of  self-expression 
in  the  universe  which  appears  when  we  approach  it  as 


/ 


122  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

clothed   with   the   infinite   and  eternal  attributes  of  a 
Work  of  Art. 

Every  system  of  thought,  as  we  have  seen,  has  its 
being  in  relation  to  the  systems  from  which  it  differs. 
If  we  tear  any  one  of  them  from  its  place  in  the  living 
whole,  and  regard  it  without  reference  to  the  body  of 
which  it  is  a  member,  we  find  ourselves  in  the  presence 
of  a  perfectly  empty  conception.  Let  the  reader  who 
doubts  this  try  to  explain  to  some  novice  the  meaning 
of  Monism  without  employing  the  conception  of 
Pluralism  as  a  means  for  making  his  explanation  in- 
telligible. He  will  find  himself  making  bricks  without 
straw.  Systems  of  thought  other  than  tJm  are  to  phil- 
osophy what  facts  other  than  this  are  to  perception, 
what  organs  other  than  tliis  are  to  the  living  body :  and 
just  as  this  concrete  fact  fades  into  an  empty  abstraction 
when  the  relations  are  broken  which  bind  it  to  others, 
so  a  particular  philosophy  sheds  all  its  contents  the 
instant  you  regard  it  as  self-contained.  A  philosophic 
consciousness  which  contains  nothing  but  its  own 
system  of  thought  contains  nothing  at  all.  The  absolute 
idealist,  for  instance,  whether  he  be  a  god  or  a  man,  is 
one  who  offers  a  solution  of  problems  which  have  arisen 
from  systems  other  than  Absolute  Idealism.  Remove 
these  other  systems  from  the  contents  of  the  philo- 
sophic consciousness,  and  no  problems  are  left  for  him 
to  answer  —  his  occupation  has  gone,  and  himself,  as 
absolute  idealist,  has  gone  with  his  occupation.  Let 
us  suppose  that  in  course  of  time  the  whole  race  of 
man  comes  round  to  his  way  of  thinking,  and  let  the 
victory  of  Absolute  Idealism  be  so  complete  as  not 
only  to  refute  all  other  systems,  but  to  erase  them  from 


THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT       123 

the  world  of  thought  and  cause  them  to  be  utterly 
forgotten.  It  would  be  a  Pyrrhic  victory.  In  for- 
getting the  others,  Absolute  Idealism  would  forget 
itself.  It  would  drag  itself  along  with  its  opponents 
into  the  pit  of  oblivion,  and  none  would  be  left  either 
to  rejoice  over  its  fall  or  to  celebrate  its  triumph.  A 
world  possessed  of  a  single  type  of  philosophy  is  a 
world  which  has  ceased  to  philosophise;  and  as  there 
is  no  knowledge  which  is  not  knowing,  so  there  is  no 
philosophy  which  is  not  philosophising. 

Once  again,  the  pragmatic  consciousness  contains  a 
manifold  of  elements  which,  while  essential  to  its  being, 
need  careful  distinction  from  Pragmatism  itself.  The 
significance  of  Pragmatism  is  bound  up  with  its 
attempted  rejection  of  Idealism,  and  one  may  well  ask 
what  would  become  of  Pragmatism  if  there  were  no 
Idealism  to  reject.  The  conflicts  of  the  philosophic 
consciousness  are  determined  not  otherwise  than  the 
conflicts  of  desire  in  the  moral  life.  As  in  the  conflict 
between  hunger  and  honesty  I  must  ideally  present 
myself  as  satisfied  in  both  ways  before  I  can  freely 
determine  myself  in  either,  so  I  must  reproduce 
Idealism  and  become  ideally  an  idealist  before  I  can 
decide  that  Idealism  is  not  for  me.  This  is  what 
is  meant  by  a  thinker's  rejection  of  Idealism,  viz.  that 
he  rejects  it  as  a  mode  of  the  philosophic  consciousness 
through  which  he  has  passed  and  into  which  he  can  return, 
but  in  which  he  has  decided  not  to  remain.  Short  of 
having  thus  reproduced  Idealism  and  made  it  his  own, 
he  has  no  competence  to  reject  it,  whether  pragmatically 
or  otherwise.  You  must  pay  your  adversary  the  com- 
pliment of  understanding  him  before  you  prove  him 
in  the   wrong.     And   understanding  him   means  that 


124  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

for  the  time  being  you  take  up  his  consciousness  into 
your  own.  Ere  you  can  escape  from  the  Kantian 
position,  or  persuade  me  to  follow  your  hne  of  escape, 
you  must  show  that  you  are  really  there  yourself ;  i,e, 
you  must  reproduce  in  yourself  (and  so  must  I)  the 
Kantian  consciousness.  Then,  and  then  only,  are  you 
and  I  in  a  position  to  discuss  the  question  of  getting 
away  from  that  condition  into  a  better.  It  is  an 
interesting  question  how  far  the  pragmatic  method 
can  be  applied  to  the  process,  through  which  every 
pragmatist  must  pass,  of  understanding  the  systems 
which  are  not  pragmatic ;  how,  for  instance,  the  com- 
prehension of  Kant  by  James,  as  the  logical  p7ius  to 
his  rejection,  conforms  to  the  principles  in  the  name 
of  which  he  is  rejected.  But  that  is  beyond  the  limits 
of  our  subject. 

The  points  I  have  desired  to  make  clear  by  these 
illustrations  are  that  the  very  conception  of  philosophy 
involves  a  variety  of  progressive  but  divergent  forms, 
for  the  same  reason  that  morality  involves  a  variety 
of  conflicting  desires  not  on  the  same  level ;  that 
philosophy  is  an  organic  whole,  the  logical  piius  of 
all  the  philosophies ;  that  its  history  is  the  evolution 
of  a  continuously  developing  life ;  that  this  life  in 
each  and  all  of  its  diverse  manifestations  is  the  expres- 
sion of  one  and  the  same  ultimate  principle ;  that 
the  full  expression  of  this  principle  is  the  goal  of  the 
whole  process,  never  attained  under  finite  conditions; 
that  no  system  is  unnecessary  which  another  system  can 
use  as  the  point  of  departure  for  a  fuller  expression. 

To  guard  such  conclusions  against  all  possible  mis- 
apprehension is  here  out  of  the  question.  But  it  will 
help  to  reveal  their  true  nature  if  I  simply  set  down 


THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT       125 

what  in  my  judgment  would  be  the  extreme  form  of 
misunderstanding  them.  If  it  were  said,  "Your  one 
philosophy,  then,  is  just  the  sum  total  of  all  the  systems, 
each  of  which  stands  in  relations  of  equality  to  all  the 
rest,  externally  coexistent  in  one  collection,  so  that 
none  is  afore  and  none  after,  but  every  one  as  good  as 
his  neighbour," — I  should  answer  that  such  a  position 
is  not  only  unwarranted  by  the  course  of  the  argument, 
but  is  negated  by  it  at  every  point.  To  say  that 
philosophy  is  the  mere  sum-total  of  the  systems  is  as 
absurd  as  to  say  that  a  fully  developed  organism  is  the 
sum-total  of  the  stages  of  its  evolution ;  while  to  treat 
all  the  varieties  of  human  thought  as  equal  manifesta- 
tions of  the  truth  is  to  make  the  acorn  equivalent  to 
the  oak. 

We  are  so  absorbed  in  explaining  what  we  in  our 
philosophies  think  about  God,  that  we  seldom  pause 
to  inquire  what  God  may  be  thinking  about  our 
philosophies.  When  so  much  is  being  said  of  the  unity 
of  God  and  man,  it  is  at  least  not  irreverent  to  ask 
what  part  or  interest,  if  any,  the  Divine  Being  is  taking 
in  these  manifold  human  speculations  as  to  his  own 
nature.     Various  alternatives  suggest  themselves. 

1.  We  may  suppose,  if  we  will,  that  these  specula- 
tions lie  entirely  outside  the  sphere  of  Divine  knowledge. 
The  Infinite,  we  may  say,  knows  the  secret  of  its 
relation  to  the  finite,  but  we  have  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  this  knowledge  coincides,  either  in  whole  or  in  part, 
with  the  account  of  the  matter  given  by  any  human 
intelligence;  perhaps  God  may  choose  to  ignore  such 
accounts  altogether.  Knowing  himself  as  he  really  is, 
God    may    know  nothing    of    himself   as   proved   by 


126  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

Descartes,  presupposed  by  Hegel,  or  postulated  by 
James. 

2.  We  may  suppose  that  there  is  some  one  among 
these  accounts  with  which  the  Divine  self-consciousness 
is  somehow  identified.  God  may  know  himself  as 
the  postulate  of  James  or  as  the  Moral  Ordainer  of 
Martineau,  and  know  nothing  of  himself  as  the  Ens 
entium  of  the  scholastics,  or  the  One  Substance  of 
Spinoza.  As  a  person  recognises  himself  in  his  own 
photograph,  so  the  Divine  Being  may  recognise  him- 
self in  this  philosophy  and  reject  all  the  others  as  false. 
I  imagine  that  this  is  the  way  in  which  most  persons 
who  think  about  the  matter  at  all  tend  to  think  about 
it  at  first.  And  with  this  a  good,  honest,  mechanical 
theology  may  rest  content.  That  a  God  who  is  one 
among  the  objects  of  the  universe  should  identify 
himself  with  one  among  the  many  theories  of  his  own 
nature  seems  consistent  enough. 

The  doctrine  of  Divine  Immanence,  in  the  form 
which  represents  God  as  the  Life  of  Thought,  "  the 
Master-light  of  all  our  seeing,"  is  now  so  common,  and 
endorsed  by  thinkers  otherwise  so  sharply  opposed,  that 
we  may  take  it  as  the  clue  to  the  final  issue,  which  is 
now  before  us.  Like  much  of  the  language  of  which 
religion  makes  frequent  use,  the  description  of  God  as 
the  Life  of  Thought  is  apt  to  be  adopted  by  persons 
who  have  the  vaguest  notions  of  what  it  means  or 
involves.  Tf  it  means  anything  at  all,  it  cancels  both 
the  alternatives  we  have  just  discussed.  For,  as  we 
have  seen,  human  thinking,  throughout  the  ages,  is  not 
a  chaos  of  fragmentary  and  unrelated  efforts,  but  a 
continuous  organic  process,  each  moment  of  which  has 
a  necessary  function  in  the  constitution  of  the  whole. 


THE   ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT  127 

It  is  only,  therefore,  as  the  Life  of  the  whole  process 
that  the  conception  of  God  as  the  Life  of  Thought  has 
any  meaning  whatsoever.  To  reserve  this  view  of  God 
for  the  moment  when  our  favourite  philosopher  is 
thinking,  and  to  refuse  to  apply  it  when  the  torch 
passes  to  his  critics,  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  divine 
light  is  limited  to  that  kind  of  thought  which  happens 
to  commend  itself  to  us.  This,  of  course,  renders  the 
whole  doctrine  perfectly  futile.  We  must  either 
abandon  the  conception  altogether,  or  be  prepared  to 
say  that  God  is  not  less  able  than  man  to  regard 
himself  as  either  postulated,  presupposed,  proved  or 
denied,  and  that,  as  the  Life  of  the  total  organism  of 
thought,  he  could  not  regard  himself  under  any  one 
of  these  forms  did  he  not  also  regard  himself  under 
the  rest,  and  no  doubt  in  infinite  other  ways  which 
human  thought  does  not  touch. 

The  final  step  is  taken  when  the  doctrine  of  Divine 
Immanence  is  extended  to  that  very  doctrine  itself — 
when,  that  is,  God  is  regarded  as  the  life  of  that 
thought  which  thinks  Him  as  immanent  in  all  thinking. 
Here  the  philosophy  which  begins  at  home  will  end 
where  it  began.  The  doctrine  of  Divine  Immanence 
must  submit  to  its  own  yoke.  Let  the  reader  who 
beheves  that  the  life  of  reason  is  the  manifestation  of 
a  divine  principle  be  on  his  guard  against  reserving 
one  moment  in  the  life  of  reason  in  which  the  divine 
principle  has  no  part,  the  moment,  namely,  when  reason 
declares  for  the  Immanence  of  God.  The  reservation 
of  such  a  moment  as  outside  the  circle  to  which  Divine 
Immanence  applies  is  tantamount  to  saying  that, 
whereas  God  is  the  life  of  all  other  thought.  He  is 
not  the   life   of  that   thought   which   is   turned    upon 


128  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

himself.  An  admission  more  fatal  to  the  conception 
of  an  immanent  God  it  would  be  impossible  to  frame. 
If  this,  the  last  deliverance  of  the  reflecting  process, 
has  to  stand  on  one  side  as  a  human  product ;  if, 
that  is,  while  the  science  which  is  turned  upon  Nature 
and  man  is  a  reproduction  of  Divine  thought,  the 
science  which  has  God  himself  for  its  object  is  an 
affair  for  which  finite  minds  alone  are  responsible, 
we  can  only  say  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Indwelling 
God  is  cleft  and  shattered  into  an  incoherent  and 
unthinkable  proposition.  This  point  reached,  the 
further  consequences  must  be  faced.  Having  admitted 
that  God  is  the  life  of  thought  concerning  himself, 
we  cannot  limit  this  truth  to  our  own  mode  of  thinking. 
If  God  is  in  the  thought  that  is  about  himself.  He 
is  in  that  thought  in  all  its  organic  diversity  as  the 
living  Principle  progressively  revealed  in  its  growth. 
We  have  seen  that  to  tie  self-consciousness  to  any 
single  form  is  to  annihilate  it  altogether.  If,  therefore, 
any  meaning  whatsoever  attaches  to  the  idea  of  a 
self-conscious  Absolute,  there  is  involved  in  the 
Absolute  a  plurality  of  self-expressions  so  diverse  as 
to  comprise  the  extreme  forms  of  difference,  even  as 
they  are  comprised  in  self-consciousness  such  as  our 
own.  Not  only,  therefore,  is  a  plurality  of  self-ex- 
pressions compatible  with  the  unity  and  self-conscious- 
ness of  the  whole,  but  it  is  an  inherent  logical  necessity 
if  we  are  to  speak  of  God  in  any  of  the  terms  that  are 
applicable  to  Spirit. 


VL— INSULATED   PHILOSOPHY 

Those  who  dream  of  Happy  Isles  have  been  guided  by 
a  true  instinct  in  their  choice  of  locality  ;  and  the  more 
one  considers  the  particular  forms  of  bliss  these  lonely 
places  are  supposed  to  offer,  the  more  clearly  he  sees 
how  impossible  it  would  be  to  cultivate  such  happiness 
on  the  mainland.  The  criticism  of  the  fault-finders 
would  be  too  severe ;  the  jealousy  of  the  unhappy  too 
aggressive ;  the  pressure  of  the  past  too  insistent ;  the 
interruptions  of  the  present  too  irritating  and  incongruous. 
How  hard  a  thing  it  is  to  control  the  present  with  all 
the  forces  of  the  past  marching  down  upon  us  by  the 
open  roads  of  history  !  How  easy  a  thing  to  construct 
the  future  if  only  we  could  place  an  ocean  of  empty 
time  between  to-morrow  and  to-day  ! 

Abstractions  are  indigenous  to  Islands,  thriving  best 
on  those  which  are  not,  and  never  can  be,  inhabited  by 
Man.  The  power  of  abstractions  increases  with  the 
insularity  of  their  position,  and  diminishes  with  every 
approach  to  the  context  of  the  mainland.  On  the 
mainland  abstractions  must  be  content  to  serve ;  but  on 
Islands,  and  especially  on  Desolate  Islands,  they  are  the 
monarchs  of  all  they  survey.  Whosoever,  therefore, 
would  set  up  the  Kingdom  of  the  Abstract,  let  him 
choose  for  himself  an  Island — so  remote  that  no  ship 
can  visit  its  shores,  so  small,  if  possible,  that  it  cannot 

129  9 


130  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

be  divided  against  itself.  Abstract  Thought,  like  Pure 
Happiness,  hungers  for  isolation  and,  oddly  enough, 
breathes  freely  only  in  an  atmosphere  of  Strict  Limits. 
Remoteness  and  minuteness  are  the  foundations  of  its 
throne.  No  marauders  from  the  realms  of  Old  Habit 
must  be  suffered  to  enter ;  no  room  must  be  given  for 
self-criticism  in  the  Kingdom  where  Abstract  Thought 
is  King. 

"  The  Thought  of  mankind,"  said  the  Plain  Man,  "  is 
still  in  the  militant  stage  of  its  evolution.  It  lives,  as 
it  were,  in  the  hurly-burly  of  vast  continents,  and  joins 
in  the  strife  of  overcrowded  populations.  The  various 
systems  of  Philosophy  are  now,  as  they  have  been  all 
along,  engaged  in  a  wasteful  war  of  mutual  destruction. 
Their  best  energies,  their  finest  genius,  are  required,  if 
one  may  so  speak,  for  the  business  of  knocking  each 
other  on  the  head.  We  hear  a  little  from  time  to  time 
of  the  application  of  Philosophy  to  life ;  but  when  we 
open  the  works  of  our  great  writers  and  search  for  these 
applications,  how  meagre,  how  disappointing  is  the 
result !  Life  is  the  goal  they  all  have  in  view,  or 
profess  to  have;  but  seldom  indeed  does  any  one  of 
them  succeed  in  getting  there.  Their  business  is  to 
accomplish  the  overthrow  of  rivals.  '  Criticism '  is  the 
name  of  it ;  and  under  that  name  we  may  behold  a 
desperate  struggle  for  existence,  a  veritable  Arma- 
geddon, if  you  will,  of  contending  intellectual  hosts, 
charging  down  upon  one  another  with  incredible  fury, 
hacking,  thrusting,  and  skull-splitting,  until  the  poor 
Plain  Man  who  is  looking  on  and  waiting  for  Truth  to 
arise  from  the  confusion,  flees  in  terror  from  the  scene, 
bolts  the  door  behind  him,  and  puts  up  a  trembling 


INSULATED   PHILOSOPHY  131 

prayer  to  the  gods  that  the  tide  of  battle  may  not  flow 
his  way,  that  his  ox,  his  ass,  and  his  Httle  ones  may  be 
spared,  and  that  no  fiery  dart  may  Hght  upon  his  cottage- 
thatch.  Thus  Philosophy  remains  at  the  miUtant  stage  ; 
an  outlet  for  the  love  of  fighting  or  the  spirit  of  con- 
tentiousness ;  a  thing  of  armaments,  of  fortified  posts, 
of  tactics,  manoeuvres,  field-days,  excursions,  alarums, 
the  beating  of  sonorous  drums  and  the  detonation  of 
mighty  cannon ;  and  a  real  battle  now  and  then.  Of 
how  many  systems  of  thought,  ancient  or  modern,  may 
we  not  say  that  they  live  by  the  mistakes  of  their 
opponents,  and  have  little  reason  to  show  for  their 
existence  save  the  need  of  proving  some  other  system 
to  be  wrong  ?  Hence  the  application  to  life,  which  we 
plain  men  have  been  promised  since  who  knows  when, 
never  comes  off,  or  at  least  is  ever  postponed  to  some 
indefinite  future  when  Thought  shall  have  passed  its 
militant  period  and  entered  on  that  of  peaceful  develop- 
ment from  within.  i\nd  just  as  nations  engaged  in 
fighting  for  existence  are  bound  to  linger  on  the  con- 
fines of  barbarism,  their  development  being  held  in 
abeyance,  while  the  Arts  of  Life  fail  to  emerge,  or 
having  emerged,  suffer  arrest,  so  these  systems  of 
Thought,  kept  back  from  their  proper  business  by  the 
brute  necessity  of  confuting  each  other,  have  never  yet 
had  a  chance  of  showing  what  they  could  do  for  the 
world  under  the  kindly  fosterings  of  Peace." 

In  the  presence  of  these  oft-repeated  accusations, 
is  it  not  strange  (we  are  now  summarising  for  the 
Plain  Man)  that  no  one  has  yet  devised  a  plan  for 
testing  philosophies  under  conditions  of  artificial  tran- 
quillity ?  Our  botanists,  our  zoologists,  do  this  every 
day  with  the  wild  creatures  of  the  natural  world  which 


132  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

it  is  their  business  to  study  and  evaluate  for  the  use 
of  man.  They  isolate  their  investigations  so  as  to 
secure  them  from  disturbance.  Might  not  the  same 
thing  be  done,  with  even  more  beneficent  results,  with 
the  various  systems  of  thought  which,  if  the  Plain  Man 
is  right,  are  at  present  trying  to  choke  each  other  like 
beasts  in  the  jungle,  or  wild  trees  in  the  forests  of  the 
Amazon?  What  is  to  hinder,  for  example,  some 
enlightened  government  or  private  society,  for  the 
matter  of  that,  from  purchasing  or  leasing  a  sufficient 
number  of  Desolate  Islands  for  the  purpose  of  segre- 
gating selected  adherents  of  various  schools,  and  of 
setting  up  on  each  an  Experimental  Farm  for  the 
practical  cultivation  of  the  particular  system  assigned 
to  its  solitudes?  Idealism,  Realism  (both  New  and 
Old),  Pragmatism,  Hedonism,  Rigorism,  Determinism, 
Free  Will  would  thus  be  separated  from  each  other 
by  vast  expanses  of  sundering  sea,  freed  from  the 
wasting  claims  of  self-defence  and  aggression,  and 
exposed  no  more  to  the  interminable  jolt  and  jar  of 
their  mutual  differences.  Each  system  would  get  at 
last  the  chance  of  showing  the  world  what  it  can  do. 
In  the  Isles  of  Hedonism,  for  example,  it  would  be 
taken  for  granted  that  Happiness  is  the  end  of  life, 
and  all  the  energy  of  mind  and  heart  hitherto  expended 
on  proving  that  Happiness  ought  to  be  promoted,  and 
on  confuting  the  people  who  proposed  some  other  end 
— a  large  proportion,  truly,  of  the  total  energy  at  the 
command  of  the  School — would  now  be  devoted  to 
the  actual  work  of  promoting  Happiness.  Thus  the 
Application  to  Life,  so  long  delayed  by  what  one  may 
term  the  foreign  wars  and  international  complications 
of  Hedonism,   would   receive   an    unrestricted   oppor- 


INSULATED   PHILOSOPHY  133 

tunity;  and  persons  like  Mr  Spencer,  who  prophesy 
what  the  world  will  be  like  when  all  men  are  Hedonists, 
would  be  able  to  check  their  predictions  by  experiments 
on  a  world  in  petto,  a  world  artificially  provided  in 
advance  with  all  the  conditions  that  will  obtain  when 
mankind  in  general  hold  the  opinions  which  Mr  Spencer, 
or  any  other  thinker,  desires  them  to  hold.  Some 
allowance,  no  doubt,  would  have  to  be  made  for  the 
knowledge,  which  we  must  imagine  the  inhabitants  of 
each  Island  to  possess,  that  the  thing  was  only  an 
experiment;  but  a  scale  for  discounting  this  rather 
troublesome  circumstance  might  be  devised  ;  and  when 
that  was  done  Philosophy  would  be  in  the  position  long 
enjoyed  by  all  the  other  sciences,  and  laboratory  work 
would  begin. 

And  not  only  would  a  need  long  felt  by  philosophers 
be  satisfied,  but  the  public  would  derive  even  a  greater 
benefit.  For  on  each  of  the  Farms  or  Laboratories  a 
careful  register  of  results  might  be  kept ;  trained  experts 
would  watch  and  record  the  civilising  influences  of  the 
various  systems  ;  and  after  a  sufficient  time  had  elapsed 
these  records  would  be  tabulated  and  compared.  Thus 
the  public,  for  the  first  time  in  the  world's  history,  would 
be  able  to  judge  Philosophy  by  its  fruits  and  justly 
estimate  the  relative  merits  of  the  different  Schools. 

In  picturing  the  result  of  such  an  experiment,  all  kinds 
of  possibilities  suggest  themselves,  and  the  reader  may  in- 
struct himself  by  imagining  them  of  this  kind  or  of  that. 
For  example,  he  may  suppose  himself  reading  a  Report 
from  the  Isles  of  Hedonism,  and  learning  therefrom 
that  the  devotees  of  Happiness  were  developing  a 
profound  melancholy  and  confessing  themselves  aweary 
of  the  world.     Pursuing  his  inquiries  he  might  read,  in 


134  THE    ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

the  proper  sections,  how  the  Pragmatists  were  reverting 
to  savagery ;  how  the  Idealists  were  going  mad ;  how 
the  Determinists  were  losing  the  use  of  their  Umbs  ; 
how  the  Free-willers  were  engaged  in  mutual  exter- 
mination ;  how  the  Realists  had  forgotten  their  language 
and  were  hooting  at  one  another  like  owls.  From  such 
Reports  he  would  conclude  that  the  philosophies  under 
review  were  severally  productive  of  race-failure,  and 
neither  he,  nor  anyone  else,  would  trouble  about  them 
any  more.  Or  he  may  please  himself  by  imagining 
results  of  an  opposite  kind  and  then  go  on  to  con- 
struct a  basis  for  further  experiments.  Reassured,  for 
example,  by  a  good  Report  from  the  Isles  of  Free 
Will,  he  might  suggest  the  plan  of  introducing  a  few 
Determinists  into  those  Islands ;  so  that  by  the  cross- 
breeding of  minds  and  careful  study  of  the  hybrids  thus 
produced,  and  by  comparison  of  these  with  the  original 
types,  he  would  see  at  once  the  relative  merits  of  the 
pure  strain  and  the  cross.  And  so  on  in  Permutations 
and  Combinations  without  end. 

It  is  probable  that  the  actual  result  of  insulating 
philosophies  in  the  manner  here  suggested  by  the 
Plain  Man  would  be  startling.  It  is  a  result  I  should 
never  have  thought  possible  had  it  not  been  confirmed 
by  the  experience  of  Devil's  Island,  and  I  shall  trust  to 
the  narrative,  presently  to  be  delivered,  to  make  the 
prediction  good. 

I  believe,  in  short,  that  the  result  of  segregating  any 
school  of  thinkers  would  be  the  conversion  of  that 
school  to  the  tenets  of  some  opposing  party.  The 
Hedonists  would  all  become  Stoics  and  the  Stoics 
Hedonists;  the  Free-willers  would  embrace  Determinism 
and  the  Determinists  Free  Will ;  the  Pragmatists  would 


INSULATED  PHILOSOPHY  1S5 

learn  to  swear  by  Hegel  and  the  Hegelians  by  William 
James ;  the  Idealists  would  go  back  to  Common  Sense, 
and  Common  Sense  would  go  forward  to  Idealism. 
There  would  be  a  general  interchange  of  parts  and 
agreement  in  nothing  save  in  the  common  determination 
of  all  parties  to  get  back  to  the  mainland  at  the  earliest 
possible  moment. 

It  may  be  said  in  passing,  for  the  point  is  important, 
that  if  the  same  experiment  were  tried  with  the  sects 
of  Christendom  a  like  result  would  almost  certainly 
follow.  Let  some  Pontiff  conceive  it  his  duty  to  ex- 
tirpate a  particular  sect,  say  the  Muggletonians,  or 
what  you  will.  How  may  he  best  succeed  in  effecting 
his  design?  Not  by  issuing  a  Bull  against  Muggle- 
tonianism ;  not  by  persecuting  its  adherents  with  the 
stake  or  the  sword.  That,  as  we  know,  will  merely 
serve  to  give  the  movement  a  new  lease  of  life.  Let 
him  rather  transport  the  offending  Muggletonians  to 
one  of  our  Islands  and  provide  them  with  all  the 
necessaries  of  life  and  with  ample  funds  to  build 
Muggletonian  churches  and  endow  Muggletonian 
schools ;  let  him  arrange  that  no  voice  shall  be  raised 
in  protest  against  Muggletonian  practice  or  in  criticism 
of  Muggletonian  theory ;  let  him  give  them  twenty 
years  of  undisturbed  enjoyment  of  each  other's  company, 
and  I  warrant  him  that  if  he  visits  the  Island  at  the 
end  of  that  time  he  will  find  not  a  single  Muggletonian 
in  the  place. 

One  cannot  pretend,  however,  that  all  philosophical 
difficulties  would  be  brought  to  an  immediate  conclusion 
by  the  adoption  of  the  experimental  method  as  suggested 
by  the  Plain  Man.  It  is  probable,  for  example,  that 
interested  parties   on  the  mainland  would  have  their 


136  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

favourite  Islands ;  and  we  may  be  very  sure  that  if  an 
unfavourable  Report  were  issued  concerning  any  Island 
in  which  distinguished  philosophers  had  a  vested  interest, 
that  Report  would  be  severely  criticised  and  its  standard 
of  judgment  condemned.  In  short,  this  question  of 
the  standard  for  judging  results  would  be  very  trouble- 
some— at  least  for  a  time.  Even  in  the  extreme  case 
of  all  the  Islands  turning  out  to  be  utter  failures,  we 
should  still  have  to  deal  with  the  pessimist  verdict, 
namely,  that  this  was  the  very  best  thing  that  could 
happen  in  a  world  where  nothing  is  worth  while,  and 
that  the  alleged  failure  was  therefore  a  triumphant 
success.  Perhaps  the  matter  would  be  ultimately 
settled  by  some  one  adducing  the  doctrine  of  what  I 
may  call  the  Absolute  Insularity — the  doctrine,  I  mean, 
which  teaches  that  the  whole  Universe  is  an  Island  of 
Being  fixed  in  an  immeasurable  ocean  of  Nothing ;  that 
whatever  conserves  Insularity  must  therefore  be  con- 
sidered good  ;  so  that  in  the  last  resort  any  Island  whose 
inhabitants  had  preserved  their  abode  from  contamination 
by  the  influences  of  the  mainland  might  be  considered 
as  having  satisfied  the  ultimate  test.  But  of  course  the 
public  would  pay  little  heed  to  all  that.  They  would 
judge  by  plainer  tests  and  give  the  palm  to  that  system 
which  produced  the  ruddiest  cheeks,  the  brightest  eyes, 
the  broadest  foreheads,  and  the  strongest  arms. 

It  was  my  fortune  to  be  cast  away  for  many  years 
on  an  Island  where  a  state  of  things  existed  which 
provided  most  of  the  conditions  required  for  such  an 
experiment.  I  say  most  of  them,  for  the  Island  was 
too  large  and  too  near  the  mainland  to  provide  them  all. 
Moreover,  the  inhabitants  were  not  perfectly  unani- 
mous ;  there  was  only  enough  unanimity  to  provide  a 


INSULATED   PHILOSOPHY  137 

basis  for  induction.  It  was  called  Devil's  Island,  after 
the  individual  who  discovered  it  and  planted  the  first 
colony. 

With  the  other  Isles  of  which  I  am  to  speak  I  have 
no  direct  acquaintance  ;  but  I  learnt  a  great  deal  about 
them  from  one  of  the  Omniscients  whom  I  encountered 
on  Devil's  Island — all  of  which  I  shall  recount  in  its 
proper  place.  I  have,  indeed,  seen  the  Isles  of  Omni- 
science many  times,  but  only  from  a  distance,  with 
leagues  of  cold  salt  water  between  them  and  me ;  and 
all  I  can  tell  of  their  appearance  is  that,  when  viewed 
from  afar,  they  seemed  to  be  covered  with  eternal  ice. 
A  dense  fog  usually  blotted  the  horizon  in  the  direction 
where  they  lay ;  but  now  and  then  a  hurricane  blast 
blew  out  of  the  North,  and,  as  the  mists  parted,  those 
Islands  would  appear,  hanging  in  air  at  the  confines  of 
vision  as  though  they  were  aloof  from  the  world. 


VIL— DEVIL'S  ISLAND  AND  THE  ISLES 
OF  OMNISCIENCE 

AN   ADVENTURE   AMONG   ABSTRACTIONS 

"  I  asked  Friday  who  made  the  sea,  the  ground  we  walked  on,  the  hills 
and  the  woods.  He  told  me  Mt  was  one  Benamuckee  who  lived  beyond 
all ' ;  he  could  describe  nothing  of  this  great  person  but  that  he  was  very  old, 
*  much  older,'  he  said,  '  than  the  sea  or  the  land,  the  moon  or  the  stars.'  I 
asked  him  then,  if  this  old  person  had  made  all  things,  why  did  not  all  things 
worship  him  ?  He  looked  very  grave,  and  with  a  perfect  look  of  innocence, 
said,  '  All  things  said  "  O  "  to  him.'  I  asked  him  if  the  people  who  die  in  his 
country  went  away  anywhere.     He  said  '  Yes,  they  all  went  to  Benamuckee.' 

"  He  told  me  one  day  that  ....  Benamuckee  could  not  hear  till  they 
went  up  into  a  great  mountain  to  speak  to  him  ....  and  that  their  old  men 
went  to  say  '  O '  (so  he  called  saying  prayers)  and  then  came  back  and  told 
them  what  Benamuckee  said.  By  this  I  perceived  that  there  is  priestcraft 
among  the  most  blinded  and  ignorant  pagans  in  the  world.  .  .  . 

"  I  endeavoured  to  clear  up  this  fraud  to  my  man  Friday  and  told  him  that 
the  pretence  of  their  old  men  going  up  into  the  mountains  to  say  '  O '  to 
Benamuckee  was  a  cheat." — Robinson  Crusoe. 


Devil's  Island  is  at  no  great  distance,  on  the  map, 
from  the  Isles  of  Omniscience.  The  Omniscients  can 
see  it  in  clear  weather  bearing  a  point  or  two  north  of 
west,  and  if  the  wind  blows  fair  a  well-found  boat  will 
make  the  passage  in  a  few  hours. 

There  is  a  legend  that  the  ancestors  of  the  Omniscients 
were  a  colony  from  Devil's  Island,  driven  thence  by  an 
outburst  of  religious  persecution,  and  though  docu- 
mentary evidence  is  lacking  the  story  is  impressively 

138 


DEVIL'S   ISLAND  139 

confirmed  by  linguistic  affinities.  Not  only  have  they 
many  words  in  common,  but  the  syntax  of  both  lan- 
guages betrays  an  identical  structure.  The  language 
of  Devil's  Island  has  developed  from  the  first  on  the 
principle  that  affirmation  is  implied  negation,  the 
peculiarity  being  that  instead  of  implying  the  negation 
as  other  races  do,  the  Devil's  Islanders  make  it  explicit 
in  their  common  mode  of  speech.  Instead  of  saying 
"  that  thing  is  a  cooking-pot "  they  say  "  that  thing  is 
not  what  it  would  be  if  it  weren't  a  cooking-pot."  Or 
if  they  want  to  indicate  everything  else  in  the  world 
except  the  pot  they  say  simply  "the  not-pot."  Thus 
the  universe  is  the  not-pot,  just  as  the  pot  is  the  not- 
universe.  The  only  diffisrence  between  the  two 
languages  is  that  the  principle  of  negation  has  been 
more  thoroughly  carried  out  in  the  language  of  the 
Omniscients,  whose  practice  when  at  home,  as  we  shall 
see,  is  to  say  nothing-at-all,  because  they  have  nothing- 
to-say. 

The  principle  which  determines  the  grammar  of  the 
Devil's  Islanders  pervades  their  whole  life,  and  may 
be  illustrated  either  from  their  religion  and  their  science, 
or  from  their  performance  of  the  humblest  task. 

They  are,  of  course,  idolaters,  but  I  was  greatly 
puzzled  at  first  by  my  failure  to  discover  any  of  their 
idols.  I  observed  that  they  were  very  devout  after 
their  manner,  that  religious  processions  were  constantly 
taking  place,  and  that  the  air  was  always  laden  with 
the  smell  of  incense  or  of  sacrifice.  But  where  they 
kept  their  gods  I  could  not,  for  a  long  time,  discover. 

I  had  noticed,  however,  that  the  ground  of  the  island, 
when  struck  by  a  stick  or  the  heel  of  one's  boot,  fre- 
quently sounded  hollow.     This  I  attributed  at  first  to 


140  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

the  burrowings  of  some  strange  animal,  perhaps  a 
gigantic  land  crab.  More  than  once  I  felt  the  ground 
giving  way  beneath  me,  and  a  horror  of  falling  into  the 
claws  of  the  crab  would  cause  me  to  clutch  for  support 
at  any  object  on  which  I  could  lay  my  hand.  I  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  walking  was  thoroughly  unsafe, 
and  I  fell  into  a  habit  of  looking  around  me  for  some- 
thing to  catch  hold  of  in  case  I  should  feel  the  surface 
sinking  beneath  my  feet.  It  was  this  habit  which  led 
me  to  discover  the  idols. 

One  evening,  when  the  light  was  failing,  I  came  to  a 
dangerous  piece  of  ground  with  a  very  thin  surface, 
honeycombed,  as  I  could  plainly  see,  by  innumerable 
burrowings.  I  stood  still  and  resolved  to  advance  no 
further  until  I  was  sure  of  my  wonted  supports.  There 
was  one  of  them  just  ahead  of  me,  and  it  looked 
like  a  statue  beautifully  framed  in  the  foliage  of  a  tree. 
1  now  advanced,  confident  that  in  case  of  accident  1 
could  easily  save  myself  by  throwing  an  arm  round 
the  neck  of  this  figure.  I  had  not  gone  many  paces 
when  my  foot  began  to  sink,  and  perceiving  that  in 
another  instant  I  should  be  entombed,  I  flung  an  arm 
round  the  statue,  only  to  find,  to  my  horror,  that  I  had 
clasped  the  empty  air.  Instantly  I  was  at  the  bottom 
of  a  hole  ten  feet  deep.  I  clambered  out  as  best  I 
could,  coughed  the  dust  out  of  my  lungs,  and,  retreat- 
ing by  the  way  I  had  come,  sat  down  to  think. 

While  thus  engaged  I  heard  a  great  noise  and  saw 
a  crowd  of  angry  people  rushing  towards  me.  One  of 
them,  who  seemed  the  most  infuriated  of  all,  and  was, 
I  suppose,  a  priest,  accosting  me  with  great  trucu- 
lence,  and  speaking  his  native  tongue,  said :  "  Are  you 
aware,  sir,  what  you  have  done  ?  "     "I  know  nothing," 


DEVIL'S   ISLAND  141 

said  I,  "save  that  I  am  much  shaken."  "And  you 
deserve  to  be,"  said  the  priest,  "for  you  have  broken 
the  head  of  our  highest  god  and  committed  a  hideous 
sacrilege  by  falling  into  his  belly."  "  But,"  said  I, 
"  the  fellow  had  nothing  inside  him."  "  The  contents," 
answered  the  priest,  "  are  presupposed,  and  your  failure 
to  see  this  increases  your  crime  tenfold."  And  then  he 
proceeded  to  argue  with  me  at  great  length  ;  that,  as  I 
afterwards  learnt,  being  the  usual  form  of  punishment 
on  Devil's  Island  for  all  who  have  done  wrong.  On 
my  side  I  contended  that  the  thing  into  which  I  had 
fallen,  seeing  that  it  was  hollow,  couldn't  be  divine. 
He  answered  by  proving,  from  the  principle  of  negation, 
that  the  Hollow  was  the  only  Real.  Beaten  from  this 
position  I  took  refuge  behind  my  former  argument — 
the  absence  of  content.  To  this  he  replied  that  I  was 
quarrelling  about  terms ;  that  the  Absent  was  only 
another  name  for  the  Hollow,  that  if  I  would  recur  to 
what  he  had  just  said  I  should  have  to  admit  that  the 
essence  of  an  idol's  belly  was  its  HoUowness.  Thus  he 
continued  to  dress  me  down  until  the  full  penalty  had 
been  inflicted,  leaving  me  in  the  end  a  beaten  man. 

From  this  the  reader  will  understand  the  secret  of 
the  idols.  They  make  the  images  of  their  gods  in 
Devil's  Island,  not  by  the  process  of  filling  them  in, 
but  by  the  contrary  process  of  hollowing  them  out. 
That  is  to  say,  having  cut  the  form  out  of  the  matter, 
they  throw  the  form  away  and  worship  the  hole  that 
is  left  by  its  removal.  Sometimes  the  statue  would  be 
made  by  clothing,  or  encasing,  the  hollow  form  of  the 
artist's  ideal,  after  the  manner  of  the  Irishman's  recipe 
for  making  a  cannon.  Sometimes  a  solid  block  of 
matter  would  be  taken,  and  the  artist  would  either  cut 


142  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

the  figure  out  of  this  in  a  single  piece  and,  of  course, 
throw  it  away;  or  he  would  gradually  scrape  the 
substance  by  an  instrument  designed  for  the  purpose 
till  the  requisite  form  and  degree  of  hoUowness  was 
attained. 

This  instrument,  by  the  way,  was  a  wonderful  tool, 
and  it  was  said  that  the  mightiest  brains  of  Devil's 
Island  had  spent  three  thousand  years  in  bringing  it  to 
perfection.  It  was  guaranteed  to  tear  the  inside  out 
of  anything  whether  living  or  dead,  and,  being  made  of 
all  conceivable  sizes  and  powers,  was  equally  effectual 
for  driving  a  shaft  through  mountains  of  granite  or 
taking  the  core  out  of  a  grain  of  dust.  When  at 
work  it  made  an  ear-splitting,  heart-rending  noise.  Its 
insistency  was  like  that  of  the  electric  riveters  as  you 
may  hear  them  at  work  on  the  steel  frame  of  a  New 
York  sky-scraper.  At  the  same  time  there  was  some- 
thing in  the  sound  which  reminded  one  of  an  extremely 
harsh  human  voice  saying  "  no  "  at  the  rate  of  twenty 
"noes"  per  second.  To  those  unaccustomed  to  the 
sound  it  was  an  amazing  experience  to  listen  at  night 
to  these  mighty  engines  roaring  and  screaming  an 
infinity  of  "  noes,"  like  things  in  conversation  with  each 
other,  as  they  tunnelled  the  everlasting  hills  and  tore 
their  way  through  the  foundations  of  the  Great  Deep. 
More  appalling  still,  I  often  thought,  was  the  sound  of 
the  more  delicate  instruments,  such  as  they  used  for 
the  hollowing  of  small  objects  or  the  evisceration  of 
minute  living  things.  These  when  held  close  to  the 
ear  pelted  out  an  endless  stream  of  little  "  noes  "  like 
sparks  from  radium.  The  sound  thus  produced  was 
comparable  to  nothing  else  I  have  ever  heard.  It  was 
malign  beyond  expression,  and  when  heard  for  the  first 


DEVIL'S   ISLAND  143 

time   would   often   paralyse  the   brain   and    stop    the 
beating  of  the  heart. 

Thus  in  course  of  time  the  whole  island  came  to  be 
hollowed  out  in  a  manner  which  not  only  rendered 
walking  extremely  dangerous  but  demanded  excessive 
care  in  respect  of  everything  one  touched.  The  objects 
which  stood  above  the  ground  had  been  treated  in  the 
same  manner  as  those  which  lay  beneath,  so  that  you 
could  never  push  aside  the  branch  of  a  tree,  or  remove 
a  pebble  from  the  beach,  without  the  risk  of  disturbing 
some  artistic  enclosure  of  empty  space  and  thereby 
displacing  the  pediment  of  a  temple  or  breaking  the 
nose  of  a  god.  Though,  as  I  have  said,  a  casual  ob- 
server would  have  thought  the  island  utterly  destitute 
of  religious  symbols,  the  truth  was  that  it  swarmed 
with  idols,  temples,  and  altars,  both  above  ground  and 
below.  The  whole  place  indeed  was  like  one  of  those 
children's  picture  puzzles,  where  faces  are  indicated  not 
by  drawing  them  but  by  leaving  them  undrawn.  Any 
arrangement  of  objects  one  came  across  was  almost 
certain  to  be,  as  it  were,  a  hollow  mound  which,  if  you 
could  have  filled  it  with  molten  metal  or  plaster  of 
Paris,  would  have  yielded  you  an  arm,  a  leg,  an  ele- 
phant's proboscis,  a  fish's  tail,  or  what  not. 

The  distinction  between  virtue  and  vice  on  Devil's 
Island  turned  upon  a  man's  power  of  walking  among 
the  hollows  without  falling  in,  and  of  moving  among 
the  stencils  without  disarranging  their  encasing  forms. 
It  was  a  very  difficult  matter  to  avoid  these  catas- 
trophes, even  for  those  born  in  the  island  ;  and  saintship 
being  reckoned  by  the  fewness  of  a  man's  falls,  it  came 
to  pass  that  as  the  island  grew  hoUower  and  hoUower 
the  number  of  saints  diminished  and  saintship  became 


144  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

almost  entirely  a  thing  of  the  past.  Great  as  was  the 
number  of  persons  engaged  in  scraping  the  hollows, 
there  was  an  even  greater  number  whose  business  was 
to  restore  the  shells  which  careless  fingers  had  marred, 
or  mend  the  hollows  after  sinners  had  fallen  in,  as  I  did 
when  I  fell  into  the  belly  of  the  god.  All  this,  of  course, 
involved  an  immense  expenditure  of  labour,  which  the 
few  Dissenters  in  the  island  hotly  condemned  as  useless 
waste.  But  anyone  who  ventured  these  opinions  was 
at  once  punished  by  argument,  the  logic  of  Devil's 
Island  being  equal  to  any  emergency,  and  able  to  make 
the  punishment  most  severe.  It  was  conclusively 
proved  against  the  dissident  that  by  his  objection  to 
falling  in  he  had  already  taken  the  first  step  towards 
his  fall.  He  was  challenged  to  furnish  an  answer  to 
the  question.  Why  should  I  not  fall  in  ?  and,  being  unable 
to  do  so,  he  was  required  to  confess  in  public  that  the 
hollows  were  their  own  justification.  Such  was  the 
mental  constitution  of  the  islanders  that  any  person 
condemned  to  this  punishment  winced  under  it  as  under 
a  lash. 

Everything  in  Devil's  Island  was  managed  in  the 
same  manner.  Suppose,  for  example,  that  you  wanted 
to  cut  a  chip.  To  accomplish  this  feat  you  must  first 
attend  to  the  principle  that  a  thing  is  always  defined  by 
its  opposite,  for  the  islanders  were  fanatically  devoted 
to  the  rule  omnis  determinatio  est  negatio.  Now  it  is 
obvious  that  the  opposite,  or  "  true  other,"  to  the  chip, 
is  the  entire  universe  from  which  the  chip  has  been 
withdrawn.  Thus,  in  Devil's  Island  practice  (as  well 
as  in  its  terminology)  you  were  not  allowed  to  cut  the 
chip  off  the  universe ;  what  you  had  to  do  was  to  cut 
the  universe  off  the  chip ;  then  by  contemplating  the 


DEVIUS   ISLAND  146 

negated  universe  so  cut  off  you  got  the  corresponding 
affirmation,  which  was  of  course  the  chip.  Contrariwise, 
if  you  wanted  the  universe  minus  the  chip,  you  first  cut 
off  the  chip,  and  then  by  contemplating  its  negative  you 
got  the  universe.^ 

II 

During  my  sojourn  on  Devil's  Island  I  became  a 
fanatical  convert  to  the  cult  of  Hollowness.  The 
change  through  which  I  passed  ought  perhaps  to  be 
called  inversion  rather  than  conversion ;  for  I  learnt  to 
see  everything  from  the  end  opposite  to  that  which  I 
had  previously  occupied.  The  principle  on  which  my 
thought  came  to  rest  was  that  the  nature  of  Reality  is 
revealed  by  the  manner  in  which  it  withdraws  itself 
from  observation.  That  which  I  had  hitherto  regarded 
as  Appearance  I  now  learned  to  interpret  as  With- 
drawal. Thus  when  a  light  was  turned  on  I  would  say 
to  myself,  "  The  darkness,  which  is  the  true  reality,  has 
withdrawn.  The  light  is  just  a  hole  in  the  darkness,  and 
the  inner  surface  of  the  hole  is  the  form  Reality  has  now 
assumed."  Again,  when  I  was  looking  at  the  sunset  I 
would  say,  "  These  colours  are  the  modes  under  which  I 
perceive  what  is  not  happening.  What  is  happening  is 
undulation  of  the  ether  at  various  velocities,  and  Reality 
has  withdrawn  these  waves  from  observation  by  pushing 
them  out  of  sight  behind  yonder  coloured  veils."  The 
ether,  in  its  turn,  resolved,  or  (as  we  always  said  in  Devil's 
Island)  '*  withdrew,"  itself  behind  a  veil  of  electrons,  and 
these,  when  explained,  bolted  (or  withdrew)  into  ions 
or  what  not. 

1  Cf.  the  article  on  "A  Pluralistic  Mystic  "  by  William  James  in  The 
Hibbert  Journal,  July  1910. 

10 


146  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

And  here,  perhaps,  I  may  interpose  that  on  Devil's 
Island  we  never  spoke  of  explanation.  The  term  by 
which  we  indicated  that  process  was  "  dismissal." 
Instead  of  saying,  for  example,  that  a  philosopher  had 
explained  virtue  as  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  we  said 
he  had  dismissed  virtue  into  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 
Scientific  men  in  like  manner  dismissed  matter  into 
vortices  of  atoms,  dismissed  atoms  into  electrons, 
electrons  into  ions,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum.  We  con- 
gratulated one  another  on  the  advent  of  the  age  of 
enlightenment,  in  which,  as  we  said,  everything  has 
either  been  triumphantly  dismissed  or  has  received 
notice  to  quit.  A  candidate  for  honours  in  philosophy 
would  be  asked,  ''  What  do  you  mean  by  the  dismissal 
of  a  mystery  ? "  and  was  expected  to  show  in  his  answer 
that  the  mystery  could  be  made  to  disappear  only  by 
dismissing  the  thing  that  was  mysterious.  Thus  the 
colours  on  a  bird's  egg  ceased  to  be  mysterious  as  soon 
as  you  were  in  a  position  to  say  these  colours  are,  for 
thought,  not  colours  but  protective  devices ;  and  the 
problem  then  awaiting  science  was,  of  course,  to  dismiss 
protective  devices  into  examples  of  universal  mechanism 
or  something  else.  Emerson's  saying,  "Things  are  in 
the  saddle  and  ride  mankind,"  would  have  seemed 
nonsense  to  any  intelligent  Devil's  Islander.  He  would 
have  said,  "  Things  have  taken  the  bit  in  their  teeth  and 
are  bolting."  The  progress  of  science  was  measured 
by  the  number  of  things  that  had  thus  bolted.  I  well 
remember  an  article  in  The  Times  of  Devil's  Island  for 
31st  December  of  a  certain  year  in  which  it  was 
proudly  claimed  that  during  the  past  twelve  months 
a  large  number  of  fresh  holes  had  appeared  in  the 
substance  of  Reality  owing  to  the  splendid  labours  of 


DEVIUS  ISLAND  147 

Professor  So-and-So;  and  no  higher  honour  was  ever 
paid  to  a  Devil's  Islander  than  that  contained  in  the 
simple  epitaph  which  a  few  years  later  was  engraved 
on  this  man's  tomb : 

"  He  drove  his  ploughshare  into  the  Bowels  of  Being  ; 
He  tunnelled  the  Universe  ; 
He  found  a  Fact,  and  left  a  Vacuum." 
Si  monumentum  quaeris,  circumspice. 

One  day  when  I  was  thinking  about  myself  and  trying 
to  pierce  the  mystery  of  my  own  consciousness,  I 
suddenly  made  the  discovery  that  my  mind  was  just 
a  hollow  shell  or  mould,  the  walls  of  which  were 
composed  of  certain  mechanical  or  chemical  changes 
proceeding  in  the  blood  or  brain.  I  saw,  just  as  Hume 
did  when  he  tried  to  contemplate  his  own  identity, 
that  nothing  was  there.  But,  unlike  Hume,  I  was 
greatly  interested  in  the  way  in  which  Reality  had 
withdrawn  itself  so  as  to  leave  behind  a  nothingness 
of  that  particular  shape  I  called  "  my  mind."  I  could 
not  overlook  the  fact  that  though  the  mould  was 
hollow,  its  hoUowness  had  a  perfectly  determinate 
character.  And  I  found  myself  continually  feeling  the 
interior  surfaces,  passing  my  hand,  as  it  were,  over  the 
integument  of  my  nothingness  and  marvelling  at 
the  way  Reality  had  scooped  itself  out,  or  thrust  itself 
back,  so  as  to  leave  behind  that  particular  configuration 
of  nothing. 

In  fine,  the  whole  universe  of  mind  and  matter 
became  to  me  an  infinite  stencil.  Every  tree  growing 
by  the  roadside,  every  little  pig  grunting  in  his  stye, 
was  interpreted  as  so  much  Reality  put  out  of  sight  in 
such  and  such  a  way.  The  starry  heavens  presented 
themselves   as   a   perforated    darkness.      Between   the 


148  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

shining  stars  I  saw  a  solid  wall  of  good  substantial 
not-being,  which  had,  so  to  speak,  negated  itself,  or 
perhaps  run  away,  wherever  a  star  appeared.  If  the 
reader  wdll  take  an  engraving  and  consider  the  artist's 
work  as  constituted  not  by  the  black  lines  but  by  the 
white  interspaces  left  untouched,  he  will  have  a  fair 
idea  of  my  habitual  Weltanschauung  during  the 
Devil's  Island  period  of  my  history. 

We  were  all  Kantians  on  Devil's  Island,  or  at  least 
we  thought  we  were — though  I  doubt  if  Kant  would 
have  acknowledged  any  one  of  us.  We  held  that 
Kant's  greatest  achievement  was  the  doctrine  of  the 
thing- in-itself.  That  the  thing-in-itself  was  no  possible 
object  of  knowledge  seemed  to  us  the  foundation  of 
philosophy.  We  contended  that  so  long  as  things 
remained  in  themselves  no  knowledge  of  them  could 
arise,  the  lodgings,  so  to  speak,  being  occupied ;  but 
when  they  came  out  q/*  themselves,  there  was  an  oppor- 
tunity for  knowledge  to  step  in  and  fill  the  vacant  room. 
We  held  that  Kant  had  lost  a  golden  opportunity  by 
failing  to  set  up  the  thing-out-of- itself  as  the  proper 
antithesis  to  the  thing-in-itself,  and  we  proceeded  to 
supply  the  defect.  The  thing-out-of-itself  was  our 
equivalent  for  the  Kantian  "phenomenon,"  and  with 
that  substitution  we  adopted  the  principle  that  only 
phenomena  can  be  known.  But  here  a  distinction 
became  necessary,  by  making  which  we  departed  from 
the  letter,  though  not  perhaps  from  the  spirit,  of  Kant's 
philosophy.  A  thing  "appears,"  we  said,  precisely 
through  this  act  of  coming  out  of  itself,  and  it  is  this 
appearance  that  we  know.  But  what  is  the  "  appear- 
ance"? Plainly  it  is  not  the  thing  standing  outside- 
of-itself,  for  such  a  thing,  properly  considered,  is  only 


DEVILS   ISLAND  149 

another  thing-in-itself ;  the  difference  between  it  and 
the  original  out  of  which  it  had  come  being  Uttle  else 
than  the  difference  between  a  dog  in  his  kennel  and 
the  same  dog  taken  out  for  a  walk,  or,  better,  between 
a  glove  in  its  usual  condition  and  the  same  glove 
turned  inside  out.  The  mere  shifting  of  position  from 
in  to  out,  therefore,  makes  no  difference  to  the  possibility 
of  knowledge  ;  for  "  in  "  and  *'  out  "  are  relative  terms, 
what  is  "  in  "  in  the  first  case  being  "  out "  in  the  second, 
and  vice  versa.  What,  then,  once  more,  is  the  appear- 
ance that  we  know  ?  Plainly  it  can  be  nothing  other 
than  the  blank  or  hole  left  in  the  inner  being  of  a  thing 
when  that  thing  goes  out-of-itself  into  something  else. 
Knowledge,  we  said  (for  we  were  fond  of  metaphors 
on  Devil's  Island),  must  always  be  content  with  the 
leavings,  and  the  leavings  are  the  empty  spaces  in  being 
occupied  by  things  prior  to  their  dismissal  by  science 
into  the  circumambient  Beyond.  By  another  figure, 
which  formed  the  starting-point  of  a  great  movement 
in  the  history  of  our  thought.  Knowledge  was  described 
as  the  Incoming  Tenant,  to  provide  for  whose  arrival 
everything  in  the  universe  was  under  Notice  to  Quit. 
The  act  of  Quitting,  we  said,  took  place  in  Time,  but 
the  Notice  to  Quit  was  eternal. 

Thus,  we  argued,  the  understanding  is  always  one 
stage  behind  the  fact.  We  understand,  that  is,  not 
what  a  thing  is,  but  what  it  was  before  thought  dis- 
missed it  to  find  a  resting-place  elsewhere.  To  illustrate 
this  process  we  referred  to  the  manner  in  which  our 
scientific  men  constructed  their  knowledge  of  bygone 
monsters,  such  as  the  Dinosaur  or  the  Megatherium. 
All  the  scientific  man  has  to  go  by  is  the  mould  of 
the  creature's  body  or  the  print  of  his  hoof  left  in  the 


160  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

mud  before  he  departed  and  was  no  more.  And  from 
such  evidence,  which,  of  course,  is  the  evidence  of  holes, 
the  scientific  man  will  body  forth  the  entire  structure 
of  the  monster  and  describe  his  general  walk  and 
conversation  in  the  primeval  slime.  Now,  all  our 
knowledge,  we  said,  is  constructed  in  that  manner. 
Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  a  thing  must  pass  out  of 
sight  in  order  that  it  may  be  seen,  must  go  on  a  journey 
in  order  that  it  may  be  found  at  home,  must  be  dis- 
missed— explained,  as  other  folk  would  say — in  order 
that  it  may  put  in  an  appearance.  "  He  who  would 
capture  the  fortress  of  reality,"  said  one  of  the  more 
picturesque  of  our  thinkers,  "must  lay  his  plans  with 
care.  He  must  wait  patiently  for  the  moment  when 
the  active  principle  which  rules  the  citadel  is  not  at 
home.  The  thing  must  first  come  out  itself.  Let  the 
besieger  therefore  " — here  1  am  afraid  there  was  some 
mixture  of  metaphors  — "  test  the  walls  with  his 
battering-rams,  and  withhold  his  main  attack,  until 
the  stones  have  responded  with  a  hollow  sound.  Then 
let  him  open  his  batteries  and  storm  in.  The  fortress 
will  be  his." 

In  short,  the  method  of  our  philosophy  on  Devil's 
Island  was  the  method  of  evacuation,  and  the  process 
of  thought  consisted  simply  in  sucking  the  meaning  out 
of  things,  the  things  thus  treated  being  then  set  up, 
like  squeezed  oranges,  as  the  only  real.  The  principle 
was  not  unlike  that  of  the  Vacuum  Cleaner,  carried, 
as  one  might  say,  to  its  logical  conclusion.  To  every 
object  of  knowledge  thought  applied  its  mouthpiece, 
and  sucked  away  until  not  only  the  superincumbent 
dust,  but  the  stuff  of  the  fabric,  the  floor  on  which  it 
rested,  nay,  even  the  walls  of  the  containing  house,  had 


DEVIL'S   ISLAND  151 

disappeared  into  the  belly  of  the  monster  that  was 
hissing  and  pounding  in  the  street  below.  The  last, 
act  of  Thought  was  to  initiate  the  process  of  mystical 
absorption,  for  it  must  be  noted  that  in  spite  of  the 
prevailing  idolatry,  or  perhaps  in  consequence  of  it, 
mysticism  occasionally  broke  out  on  Devil's  Island. 
This  last  act  can  only  be  described  by  saying  that  it 
consisted  in  turning  the  mouthpiece  of  the  Cleaner  on 
yourself  and  awaiting  results  in  a  state  of  wise  passive- 
ness,  until  your  consciousness  became  absorbed  in  the 
eternal  sputter  of  the  machine.  The  end  was,  of 
course,  that  you  yourself  followed  your  carpets  and 
furniture  into  the  belly  of  your  system.  Arrived  there, 
you  mingled  with  the  universal  dust  and  lost  all  sense 
of  your  separateness  from  it,  while  from  a  spy-hole 
provided  for  the  purpose  you  looked  forth  at  intervals 
on  the  vacant  space  once  occupied  by  yourself,  and 
reflected,  "  Such  was  1." 

Of  all  the  islanders  I  have  known  there  is  none  to 
compare  with  the  Devil's  in  the  matter  of  logical 
thoroughness.  I  could  never  detect  any  flaw  in  their 
logic,  and  although  their  philosophy  was  a  philosophy 
of  gaps,  I  could  never  find  any  gap  in  their  philosophy. 
But  I  could  not  help  observing  that  in  all  other  respects 
they  were  a  miserable  set.  They  had  big  heads  and 
stunted  bodies ;  they  were  polite  in  manners,  and  eloquent 
in  discourse,  but  abominably  sneakish  in  behaviour. 
For  solemnity  of  carriage  I  have  never  met  their  equals ; 
but  there  was  not  a  man  on  the  island  whom  I  would 
have  trusted  with  the  loan  of  a  pin.  According  to 
their  system  of  morality  nothing  was  right  unless  you 
could  prove,  by  the  principle  of  negation,  that  it  was  not- 
wrong  ;  the  consequence  was  that  sneakishness,  which 


152       THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

stood  the  test  better  almost  than  any  other  quality, 
was  reckoned  one  of  the  highest  virtues.  The  chief 
controversy  among  their  moralists  was  as  to  the  precise 
significance  of  the  word  "  not,"  on  which  many  great 
volumes  were  written ;  the  majority  holding  that  the 
word  meant  nothing,  the  minority  that  no  other  word 
meant  anything ;  and  this  latter  opinion  led  at  one 
time  to  a  very  dangerous  outbreak  of  honourable 
behaviour  which  the  Sneaks,  then  in  power,  promptly 
suppressed. 

Again,  if  you  had  been  in  one  of  their  churches  you 
would  have  thought  them  very  religious  ;  nowhere  else  in 
the  world  was  to  be  found  such  eloquence,  such  pious 
attitudes,  such  grave  demeanour.  But  it  meant  nothing, 
and  what  was  more,  they  knew  it ;  nay,  their  philosophers 
openly  taught  that  only  as  meaning  nothing  was  religion 
to  be  professed,  practised,  or  desired.  There  was  no  end 
of  grandiose  talk  about  "  ideals  "  ;  but  the  reality  of  an 
ideal,  they  would  tell  you,  was  precisely  its  hoUowness. 
Did  you  ask,  "  What,  then,  was  the  good  of  it  ? "  they 
would  answer,  "  Why,  to  talk  about,  of  course." 

But  I  must  return  to  the  metaphysics  of  the  island. 
In  some  respects  we  Devil's  Islanders  had  advanced 
beyond  Kant.  Most  of  us  had  adopted  the  principle 
of  Evolution,  and  our  interpretation  of  this  doctrine 
was,  I  think,  consistent  on  the  whole  with  the  turn  we 
had  given  to  the  Kantian  philosophy.  That  things 
acquire  their  characteristics  through  the  modifying 
influences  of  the  environment  was  a  commonplace  of 
our  thought,  but  we  avoided  the  one-sided  form  in 
which  this  doctrine  is  held  in  other  parts  of  the  world. 
It  was  quite  true,  we  admitted,  that  a  midge,  for 
example,  might  be  fully  explained,  or  as  we  said  dis- 


V 


DEVIUS   ISLAND  153 

missed,  by  reference  to  the  totality  of  its  environing 
conditions,  this  environment  being  co-extensive  with 
all  the  remaining  universe  after  the  subtraction  of  the 
midge.  Understand  the  environment  and  you  have 
all  that  is  necessary  to  get  a  complete  account  of  the 
origin,  structure,  and  behaviour  of  the  midge.  But 
this,  in  which  we  followed  the  common  doctrine,  was 
only  one  side  of  the  matter.  The  distinctive  feature  of 
our  thought  lay  in  the  doctrine  that  what  was  true 
of  the  midge  was  true  also  of  the  totalised  remainder  of 
the  universe  from  which  the  midge  had  been  subtracted. 
Here  on  one  side  was  the  midge — the  organism  ;  there 
on  the  other  side  was  the  remainder  of  the  universe — 
the  environment.  Look  at  the  matter  fairly  and  you 
would  see  that  organism  and  the  environment,  like  in 
and  out,  were  merely  relative  terms;  and  while  no 
doubt  the  rest  of  the  universe  was  environment  to  the 
midge,  yet  from  the  other  point  of  view  the  midge  had 
an  equal  claim  to  be  considered  the  environment  of  the 
rest  of  the  universe.  The  midge  and  the  rest  of  the 
universe  made  up  between  them  the  totality  of  every- 
thing there  was  ;  the  rest  of  the  universe,  therefore,  could 
have  no  other  environment  than  that  which  the  midge 
provided.  Now,  what  was  sauce  for  the  goose  was 
sauce  for  the  gander.  There  could  be  no  doubt  that 
while  on  the  one  hand  the  midge  owed  its  character 
to  the  reaction  upon  it  of  the  rest  of  the  universe,  on 
the  other  hand  the  rest  of  the  universe  owed  its 
character  to  the  reaction  upon  it  of  the  midge.  In 
this  way  we  sought  to  correct  the  one-sidedness  of 
the  evolutionary  hypothesis  as  propounded  on  the 
mainland. 

It  must  be  confessed,  however,  that  we  developed 


154  THE   ALCHEMY    OF  THOUGHT 

a  difference  of  opinion  when  we  applied  this  wider 
hypothesis  to  the  problem  of  the  creation  of  the  world. 
Some  held  that  the  original  datum  of  creative  activity 
was  a  midge  or  some  such  creature  and  that  the 
process  of  creation  consisted  in  fitting  on  the  rest  of 
the  universe  to  the  midge;  others  held  the  inverse 
doctrine,  namely,  that  the  datum  or  given  material 
was  all  the  rest  of  the  universe  and  that  creation 
consequently  was  the  process  of  fitting  in  the  midge 
to  the  totality  of  everything  else.  The  adherents  of 
the  first  position  were  appropriately  called  the  Fitters- 
on ;  of  the  second,  the  Fitters-in.  There  was  a  great 
deal  of  confusion,  and  I  must  admit  that  the  thinking 
of  Devil's  Island  on  this  matter  had  not  the  clearness 
characteristic  of  its  general  procedure.  The  first  school 
contended  very  justly  that  the  process  of  fitting- on 
could  not  proceed  unless  the  midge,  to  which  the 
universe  was  adapting  itself,  retained  a  fixed  form 
throughout,  any  more  than  a  tailor  could  make  a  suit 
of  clothes  to  fit  a  man  with  a  fluctuating  body.  The 
fitters-in,  on  the  other  hand,  demanded  a  like  fixity 
in  the  universe  for  which  the  midge  was  being  con- 
trived ;  but  both  parties  being  evolutionists,  no  satis- 
factory reason  could  be  given  by  either  why  midge 
or  universe  should  retain  its  form  for  two  consecutive 
seconds.  Finally,  a  few  metaphors  were  invented,  one 
of  an  evolving  tailor  who  made  evolving  clothes  to 
fit  evolving  bodies ;  another,  of  a  criminal  assiduously 
fitting  himself  to  the  punishment  which  at  the  same 
time  was  being  fitted  to  him  ;  and,  as  you  could  always 
settle  a  dispute  on  Devil's  Island  by  a  brilliant  metaphor 
and  by  the  pooling  of  issues,  the  main  difficulties  were 
ultimately  got  rid  of.     The  distinction  between  organism 


DEVIL'S   ISLAND  155 

and  environment  was  abandoned,  and  a  doctrine  of 
mutual  inclusion  which  substituted  "  both  "  for  "  either  " 
made  everything  grammatically  clear. 

Ill 

And  now  the  question  may  be  asked  how  it  came  to 
pass  that  I  ever  found  myself  in  this  outlandish  place  ? 
What  brought  me  hither,  what  was  the  manner  of  my 
arrival,  what  reasons  induced  me  to  stay?  Frankly, 
I  know  not.  Often  have  I  asked  myself  the  same 
question,  but  in  vain ;  the  secret  of  my  coming  to 
the  island  remains  to  this  day  the  deepest  of  all  the 
mysteries  that  baffle  me.  Sometimes  I  have  thought 
that  I  must  have  been  drugged.  Perhaps  some  drowsy 
syrup  was  administered,  poppy  or  mandragora,  and  a 
passing  vessel  may  have  dropped  me  on  the  island ;  or 
perhaps  I  was  shipwrecked  and  carried  ashore  in  my 
sleep.  Often,  as  I  recall  the  incidents  of  my  sojourn, 
the  words  of  Dante  recur  to  me : 

"  V  non  so  ben  ridir  com'  io  v'  entrai ; 

Tant'  era  pien  di  sonno  in  su  quel  punto, 
Che  la  verace  via  abbandonai." 

But  though  the  circumstances  of  my  arrival  are 
utterly  obscure,  there  is  no  mystery  about  my  de- 
parture. I  have  a  good  recollection  of  every  relevant 
detail  in  the  causes  which  led  to  my  leaving  Devil's 
Island  once  and  for  all.  Indeed,  it  happened  not  so 
long  ago.     How  it  came  to  pass  I  will  now  relate. 

Not  far  from  the  place  where  I  lived  there  stood  an 
ancient  crannied  wall.  The  crannies  were  many  and 
deep,  and  because  of  this  the  islanders  let  it  stand, 
for,  said  they,  the  wall  is  fairly  hollow,  its  hoUowness 


156  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

increases,  and  if  left  alone  it  will  become  perfect,  and 
tumble  down  in  course  of  time. 

In  one  of  the  crannies  of  this  wall  there  grew  a 
flower  of  a  species  especially  dear  to  me.  It  was  an 
antirrhinum,  or  snapdragon,  and  it  had  for  me  a  moving 
interest,  for  it  reminded  me  of  thoughts  too  deep  for 
tears.  I  don't  ask  the  reader  to  concern  himself  in  the 
tragedies  of  my  life ;  no  doubt  he  has  his  own,  and 
they  are  enough.  But  for  the  purpose  of  this  narrative 
I  must  tell  him  that  in  bygone  years,  long  before  I 
voyaged  on  the  strange  seas  of  thought,  my  life  had 
been  wrapped  up,  as  we  say,  in  the  life  of  a  little  boy, 
to  whom  I  had  given  a  patch  of  garden  ten  feet  square. 
This  he  sowed  with  antirrhinums,  and  stood  all  day 
beside  it  to  watch  them  grow.  They  came  red  and 
yellow;  the  yellow  ones,  he  said,  were  his  Auntie 
Rinums,  and  his  Uncle  Rinums  were  the  red ;  and  he 
used  to  laugh  immoderately  at  his  little  joke.  Well, 
he  died  ;  and  "  oh,  the  difference  to  me." 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that  my  departure  from 
the  mainland  and  my  arrival  at  Devil's  Island  was 
not  unconnected  with  his  death.  Longer  and  more 
disastrous  voyages  than  mine,  I  reflected,  have  often 
resulted  from  such  incidents ;  besides,  the  presence  of 
this  flourishing  snapdragon  in  an  island  where  flowers 
were  almost  extinct,  always  seemed  to  me  a  hint  that 
the  two  things  were  in  some  way  connected.  But  I 
must  not  interrupt  my  narrative  with  these  sentimental 
excursions. 

As  I  said,  the  flower  grew  in  the  crannied  wall, 
renewing  itself  year  by  year,  and  changing  its  colours, 
sometimes  red,  sometimes  yellow,  sometimes  a  mixture 
of  the  two,  as  the  manner  of  antirrhinums  is.     All  this 


DEVIL'S   ISLAND  157 

was  very  eloquent  to  me,  and  in  the  season  of  blooms 
not  a  day  passed  but  I  visited  the  spot  and  indulged 
in  thoughts  which  are  hard  to  reproduce  and  perhaps 
not  worth  reproducing.  I  admit  they  were  unnatural 
thoughts  for  a  Devil's  Islander,  even  an  adopted  one 
like  me,  and  they  were  strangely  out  of  keeping  with 
the  place.  But  as  I  looked  at  the  flower  I  thought  of 
its  human  counterpart ;  I  thought  of  the  place  on  the 
mainland  where  this  had  once  flourished ;  I  thought 
that  if  ever  I  visited  that  place  again  I  should  look  in 
vain  for  my  flower,  for  the  wind  had  passed  over  it  and 
it  was  gone.  These  meditations,  if  they  may  be  called 
such,  were  the  sole  luxury  my  mind  enjoyed  during  its 
long  incarceration  in  that  island ;  and  the  luxury  had 
to  be  enjoyed  in  secret,  for  I  knew  there  was  not  a 
soul  in  the  entire  population  of  Devil's  Islanders  whom 
I  could  take  into  my  confidence,  for  they  were  all 
incapable  of  understanding  what  such  things  meant. 

One  day  while  thus  engaged  my  reverie  was  broken 
by  the  apparition  of  a  stranger.  He  was  regarding  me 
with  interest,  and  I  got  the  impression  that  he  had  been 
standing  in  the  same  attitude  for  some  considerable 
time.  I  saw  that  he  was  a  foreigner,  but  a  foreigner 
accustomed  to  travel,  for  though  in  strange  parts  he 
had  the  air  of  a  man  at  his  ease. 

I  was  half  attracted  and  half  repelled  by  his  appear- 
ance. I  believe  that  he  got  himself  up  to  look  like 
Michael  Angelo's  picture  of  God  in  the  frescoes  at 
Rome.  That,  as  the  sequel  proved,  was  the  part  he 
wanted  to  play,  and  on  the  whole  I  must  confess  it  was 
a  clever  make-up.  So  far  so  good;  but  beyond  this 
there  was  something  about  him  I  did  not  like.  Like 
other  people  who  fancy  themselves  gods  he  had  thought 


158  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

it  due  to  the  character  that  he  should  assume  something 
of  the  air  of  a  bully,  as  though  swagger  were  a  mark  of 
the  divine.  His  figure  and  expression  were  imperial 
enough  until  you  came  to  the  eyes ;  but  in  them  there 
was  a  furtive,  restless  look  which  seemed  to  say  that 
the  part  of  a  god  was  one  which  he  knew  he  couldn't 
sustain,  and  that  if  opportunity  were  given  he  would 
immediately  lapse  from  his  dignity  and  betray  himself 
a  vulgar  snob.  And  yet  as  the  man  stood  before  me — 
for  he  remained  without  speaking  long  enough  for  me 
to  study  him  and  draw  conclusions — my  feehng  was 
that  in  the  long-run  he  might  turn  out  to  be  a  likeable 
fellow ;  and  that  all  these  grand  airs  of  his  belonged  to 
a  part  which  had  been  forced  upon  him  by  an  unkindly 
lot.  Also  I  noticed  there  were  lines  of  sorrow  on  his 
brow. 

"  You  seem  a  stranger,"  I  said. 

"  Yes,"  he  replied.  *'  I  come  from  the  neighbouring 
Isles  of  Omniscience.  I  have  just  been  released  for  my 
annual  holiday." 

"  I  thought  that  your  people  needed  no  holidays,"  I 
said.  "  When  you  know  everything  it  must  be  rather 
difficult  to  find  a  change,  either  of  air  or  scene  or  any- 
thing else.  And  1  can't  imagine  why  a  change  should 
be  necessary." 

*'  Oh,"  he  said,  "you're  quite  mistaken  about  all  that. 
Things  are  uncommonly  quiet  over  there" — and  he 
pointed  to  the  south-east,  where  I  could  see  the  Isles  of 
Omniscience  shimmering  on  the  distant  edge  of  the 
ocean- floor — "  uncommonly  quiet,  I  can  assure  you. 
Except  for  our  annual  holidays  I  doubt  if  we  could 
stand  it.  Some  of  us  take  a  trip  to  the  mainland  ;  but 
for  my  part  nothing  does  me  so  much  good  as  a  visit 


DEVIL'S   ISLAND  159 

to  this  island  and  a  fortnight's  romp  with  the  jolly 
islanders." 

"  Jolly  islanders  !  "  I  cried.  "  Why,  we  are  the  dullest 
dogs  under  heaven." 

"  You  wouldn't  think  so  if  you  lived  in  our  islands," 
said  he.  "  Everything,  you  see,  is  relative  to  everything 
else.  You  can  form  no  idea  of  the  tedium  vitce  we  have 
to  endure,  nor  of  the  relief  it  is  to  have  a  run  in  a  place 
like  this." 

"  But,"  I  said,  "  it's  a  dangerous  place  to  run  wild  in. 
The  whole  island  is  full  of  holes,  and  unless  you  keep  a 
sharp  look  out  you'll  be  down  one  of  them  in  no  time 
and  perhaps  break  your  neck.  I've  had  many  narrow 
escapes  myself.  The  fact  is,  I'd  clear  out  to-morrow  if 
I  could,  for  I  don't  half  like  it." 

"  Oh,"  he  said,  "  you  needn't  be  anxious  about  me. 
Trust  an  omniscient  for  knowing  where  the  holes  are, 
and  for  keeping  himself  out  of  trouble.  Besides,  it's 
part  of  our  holiday  fun  to  smash  them  in,  and  then  get 
into  argument  with  the  islanders.  Of  course  we  can 
always  beat  them  at  that — they're  just  babes  in  our 
hands.  How  do  they  like  it  ?  Well,  they  pretend  not 
to  like  it,  and  they  make  us  pay  pretty  smartly  for 
the  damage.  But  in  their  heart  of  hearts  they  enjoy 
the  fun  just  as  much  as  we  do." 

"  I  notice,"  I  said,  "  that  you  speak  of  our  islanders  as 
'  they.'     Please  to  remember  that  I'm  one  of  them." 

"  Pooh ! "  he  replied.  "  You  can't  take  me  in.  I 
know  all  about  you.  You're  no  native  of  this  island, 
and  you  play  the  part  of  one  pretty  badly.  No  born 
Devil's  Islander  ever  wore  an  expression  on  his  face  such 
as  yours  had  when  I  first  saw  you  staring  at  yonder 
wall.     However,  if  you  don't  like  the  place  why  do  you 


160  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

stay  in  it  ?  Try  our  islands  for  a  change.  We'd  soon 
find  you  a  billet,  and  you'd  get  accustomed  to  our 
ways  in  a  month." 

"  But,"  I  exclaimed,  "  you  said  things  were  even  duller 
there  than  here  ;  and  though  I  can't  understand  why,  I 
take  your  word  for  it,  and  I  assure  you  that  the  Isles 
of  Omniscience  wouldn't  do  for  me.  Why,  the  dulness 
of  this  place  is  already  more  than  I  can  stand  ;  anything 
duller  would  kill  me  outright." 

"  You're  changing  the  ground  of  your  argument,"  he 
said.  "  Your  last  point  was  that  this  island  is  unsafe, 
and  I  suggested  the  Isles  of  Omniscience  as  a  place 
where  danger  cannot  exist.  You  couldn't  break  your 
neck  there,  because,  if  it  is  to  be  broken  at  all,  it  must 
have  been  broken  from  all  eternity." 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  I  don't  understand  that.  Give  me 
ten  days  to  think  it  over  and  perhaps  I  may  be  able  to 
follow  you.  Meanwhile,  tell  me  more  about  the  dulness 
you  complain  of.  I  should  have  thought  that  it  must 
be  very  interesting  to  know  everything." 

"My  good  fellow,"  he  replied,  "you've  no  imagina- 
tion whatsoever.  Can't  you  understand  that  knowing 
everything  is  precisely  the  same  as  knowing  nothing 
at  all  ?  Just  consider  what  it  means !  In  our  islands 
it's  impossible  to  think  of  anything,  because  every- 
thing has  been  already  thought  of.  It's  impossible 
to  do  anything,  because  everything  is  for  ever  done. 
It's  impossible  to  say  anything,  because  everybody 
knows  what  you're  going  to  say.  It's  impossible  to 
find  anything,  because  nothing  can  ever  be  lost.  Why, 
if  you  write  a  book,  the  whole  population  takes  it  as 
read  and  you  can't  sell  a  single  copy.  I've  often  told 
these  stupid  folk  on  Devil's  Island  that  they  ought  to 


DEVIL'S  ISLAND  161 

migrate  in  a  body  to  our  part  of  the  Archipelago. 
Why  spend  your  lives  on  explaining  things  away  when 
the  very  next  island  to  your  own  would  provide  you 
with  Nothing-to-explain  ?  That's  what  I  say  to  them. 
But  I  suppose  it's  crossing  the  sea  that  frightens 
them.  They're  poor  sailors.  However,  you  can't 
imagine  how  dull  it  is." 

"  Is  there  no  means,"  I  asked,  "  of  laying  your 
omniscience  aside  when  you  find  it  inconvenient?  I 
have  heard  of  such  things  being  done  in  another 
island."^ 

'*Well,"  he  said,  "some  time  ago  a  movement  was 
set  on  foot  to  improve  matters.  It  was  proposed  that 
the  post  of  Omniscience  should  be  reserved  for  one  man, 
who  should  be  a  kind  of  king,  while  all  the  rest  of  us 
should  reduce  ourselves  to  a  condition  of  partial  know- 
ledge. It  looked  promising,  but  when  it  came  to 
business  nobody  could  be  found  to  take  the  kingship  ; 
everybody  wanted  it  to  be  given  to  somebody  else. 
So  it  all  came  to  nothing,  and  then,  of  course,  it  turned 
out  that,  being  omniscient,  we  had  known  that  it  would 
come  to  nothing  all  along.  Looks  like  a  huge  farce  ? 
Not  at  all.  You  don't  understand.  There  can  be  no 
farce  when  you  know  how  everything  is  going  to  turn 
out.  That's  the  trouble  I  Our  people  would  give  half 
their  kingdom  for  a  farce.  But  they  can't  get  one  up. 
Complications  ?  Well,  your  stupidity  is  colossal.  Of 
course,  our  standard  of  intelligence  is  high,  and  perhaps 

1  "  Mais  il  con vi exit  que  ma  prescience  n'entreprenne  pas  sur  leur 
libre  arbitre.  Afin  de  ne  point  porter  atteint  a  la  liberte  humaine 
j 'ignore  ce  que  je  sais,  j'epaissis  sur  mes  yeux  les  voiles  que  j'ai  perces 
et,  dans  mon  aveugle  clairvoyance,  je  me  laisse  surprendre  par  ce  que 
j'ai  prevu." — L'lle  des  Pingouins^  p.  44. 


168  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

I  judge  you  unfairly,  but  your  suggesting  complications 
in  the  Isles  of  Omniscience  does  strike  me  as  discreditable 
even  in  a  being  of  partial  knowledge  like  you.  Why,  my 
dear  sir,  if  you  will  come  over  to  our  islands  and  intro- 
duce a  few  complications  the  people  will  worship  you  as 
a  god.  They'd  give  even  more  for  a  complication  than 
they  would  for  a  farce.  And  if  only  the  complication 
were  a  complete  mystery  1  Ah  me !  there  you  touch 
me  on  the  tenderest  spot.  Despair  of  mystery — despair, 
I  mean,  of  ever  finding  a  mystery  to  tackle — that  is 
our  settled  mood,  and  it  is  the  one  interesting  emotion 
that  is  left  us.  Were  it  not  for  this  despair  we  should 
all  die  1" 

"  No  fear  of  that,"  I  said,  for  I  was  now  catching  the 
spirit  of  the  argument.  "  No  fear  of  your  dying.  Did 
you  not  tell  me  that  in  your  islands  nobody  could  break 
his  neck,  since  to  omniscience  it  must  have  been  broken 
from  all  eternity  ?  How,  then,  could  an  omniscient  die  ? 
You  can't  introduce  anything  new  into  the  experience 
of  a  being  who  knows  everything.  If  ever  you  die, 
therefore,  you  must  have  known  yourself  as  dead  all 
along.  In  your  experience  what  isn't  happening  always 
can't  happen  at  all." 

I  could  see  that  I  had  given  him  a  home-thrust  and 
that  he  was  a  little  staggered.  Seeing  him  thus  my 
suspicions  were  aroused,  for  I  reflected  that  a  being 
omniscient,  as  he  pretended  to  be,  ought  not  to  be 
taken  by  surprise  or  knocked  off  his  perch  by  any 
conceivable  argument.  "The  man,"  I  said  to  myself, 
"is  an  impostor  after  all." 

"  Come  now,"  he  said,  after  a  little,  "  let  us  under- 
stand one  another.  I  know  the  kind  of  man  you  are. 
You're  one  of  those   fellows  who  go   about  trying  to 


DEVIL'S   ISLAND  163 

make  logical  trouble  for  other  people.  But  you'd 
better  not  try  that  with  me,  or  you'll  get  the  worst  of 
it.  This  accursed  Devil's  Island  is  full  of  people  like 
you ;  I  suppose  it's  a  habit  you've  picked  up  from  the 
rest  of  them.  Take  my  advice  and  give  it  up,  especi- 
ally when  you  meet  a  man  from  our  islands.  You 
can't  make  logical  trouble  for  us,  and  don't  you  forget 
it!" 

1  knew,  of  course,  that  all  this  was  bluff,  and  1 
resolved  not  to  let  myself  be  browbeaten  even  by  an 
omniscient ;  nor  would  I  abandon  the  advantage  I 
had  already  won.  So  I  said :  "  You  spoke  just  now 
as  though  a  little  logical  trouble  were  precisely  what 
you  wanted — I  mean  when  you  were  speaking  about 
complications.  That's  why  I  offered  my  last  remark. 
I  was  in  hopes  you'd  fall  down  and  worship  me  as  a 
god.  Instead  of  that  you  fly  into  a  rage  and  threaten 
me  with  I  don't  know  what." 

He  laughed,  and  I  saw  a  total  change  come  over  his 
countenance.  **  Well,"  he  said,  "  let  us  try  to  under- 
stand each  other,  as  I  proposed  just  now.  I'll  tell  you 
something  in  confidence.  One  of  the  chief  pleasures 
of  my  annual  holiday  in  this  island  is  the  pleasure  of 
being  frank.  I'm  going  to  be  frank  wdth  you,  I 
don't  deny  that  there  is  a  touch  of  humbug  over 
there"  —  he  pointed  to  the  shimmering  islands  in 
the  south-east — "though  it's  mainly  professional  and 
therefore  innocent.  The  fact  is,  our  claim  to  omni- 
science needs  to  be  taken  in  a  certain  sense.  It's  true 
that  we  know  everything  in  general,  but  we  don't 
know  each  thing  in  particular.  Or,  as  you  would  say, 
we  know  the  All  as  such,  but  not  otherwise  ;  and  if  you 
ask  for  particulars  we  are  apt  to  get  into   a  muddle. 


164  THE  ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

But  to  know  the  All,  even  as  such,  is  no  small  achieve- 
ment, I  can  assure  you.  I  v^as  years  in  attaining  it, 
though  1  am  not  sure  that  I  am  much  the  gainer  by 
the  attainment." 

"The  dulness  you  complain  of,"  I  interposed, 
"suggests  that  you  are  not." 

"  No  doubt  there  are  disadvantages,"  he  said,  "  though 
it  would  be  hard  to  explain  them.  So  long  as  you  know 
the  All — as  such — at  intervals  only,  it's  a  very  interest- 
ing experience ;  but  when  you  can't  help  seeing  the  All 
in  everything  you  look  at,  you  begin  to  lose  heart,  and 
life  becomes  pretty  blank.  I'm  like  that  myself  some- 
times. The  All  obsesses  me,  never  leaves  me,  comes 
between  me  and  my  business,  and  turns  existence  into 
something  of  a  nightmare.  When  that  state  comes  on 
I  know  that  I  want  a  holiday,  and  I  take  the  next  boat 
for  Devil's  Island." 

At  this  moment  one  of  the  great  boring-machines  to 
which  1  have  previously  alluded — the  machines  which 
had  cost  the  intellect  of  Devil's  Island  three  thousand 
years  of  labour  to  render  perfect — began  tearing  the 
ribs  out  of  a  mountain  immediately  to  our  right.  The 
sound  was  deafening.  In  a  few  minutes  ten  thousand 
"  noes,"  each  as  loud  as  a  cannon  shot,  were  exploded 
into  space. 

"  How  would  you  like  to  have  that  kind  of 
thing  going  on  under  your  windows  night  and  day  ? " 
I  asked. 

He  replied  with  enthusiasm,  "  I  should  like  nothing 
better — at  least  for  a  time.  That  sound  is  the  principal 
attraction  that  brings  me  to  Devil's  Island,  and  it  does 
me  more  good  than  I  can  tell  you.  We've  got  a  worse 
machine  than  that  in  our  islands.     It  says  '  yes,  yes,  yes,' 


DEVIUS   ISLAND  165 

all  day  long,  until  the  whole  universe  seems  to  hiss  like 
a  serpent.  I  tell  you,  my  friend,  it's  an  infinitely  more 
trying  lot  to  have  to  stand  up  to  the  bombardment  of 
the  everlasting  yea  than  to  endure  an  occasional  visit 
from  the  Vacuum  Cleaner.  Why,  it's  a  positive  relief 
to  hear  a  few  negations.     Ha  !     It's  beginning  again  ! " 

"  Can  you  relate  any  instances,"  I  asked,  when  the 
noise  had  subsided,  "to  illustrate  all  this?  As  yet  I 
don't  quite  understand  why  the  All  should  make  your 
existence  such  a  burden." 

"  I  could  give  you  many,"  he  said,  "  but  the  subject 
is  a  painful  one,  and  just  now  I  wish  to  forget  it. 
Remember  I  am  on  my  holiday,  and  am  trying  to 
escape  from  this  very  thing.  Tell  me  rather  what  you 
yourself  are  after.  Why  were  you  looking  so  sad  when 
I  saw  you  first  ? " 

"  That  also,"  I  replied,  "  is  a  painful  subject ;  but, 
unlike  yours,  it  becomes  less  painful  when  talked  of, 
though  I  don't  often  get  the  chance.  In  this  God- 
forsaken place  they  don't  care  for  such  things.  But 
you  are  different,  and,  if  you  like,  I'll  tell  you  the 
story." 

I  stumbled  through  it  as  best  I  could,  and  when  1 
had  done  I  looked  up  to  see  what  impression  it  had 
made  on  the  Man  from  the  Isles  of  Omniscience.  To 
my  great  embarrassment  I  saw  that  he  was  staring  at 
the  flower  in  the  crannied  wall  with  a  vacant  and  most 
melancholy  expression  in  his  eyes.  But  I  thought  it 
best  to  go  on.  "  It's  not  much  to  look  at,"  I  said.  "  It's 
only  a  snapdragon,  and  not  a  very  good  one  neither  ;  but 
from  what  I've  said  you'll  understand  why  it  means  so 
much  to  me." 

*'  Snapdragon  ? "  he  said,  in  a  tone  of  irritation  that 


166  THE   ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

distressed  and  surprised  me.     "  What  fool  is  talking  of 
snapdragons  ?     There  are  no  snapdragons  here." 

"  But  what's  that  you're  looking  at  ? "  I  cried,  pointing 
to  the  flower  in  the  crannied  wall. 

"  God-and-man,"  he  groaned  ;  "  God-and-man  !  Will 
the  awful  thing  never  depart  ? " 

"  Great  heavens  I "  I  thought.    "  What's  to  be  done  ? " 

At  that  moment  he  turned  his  eyes  upon  me,  and 
the  utter  vacancy  of  their  look  made  me  shudder. 
Then  in  a  flash  the  secret  of  his  trouble  was  revealed 
to  me.  "  He's  at  the  universal  standpoint,"  I  thought, 
''  and  sees  nothing.  It's  the  blankness  of  omniscience. 
The  Oneness  of  the  One  has  got  hold  of  him." 

"  Come,"  I  said  after  a  little,  "  take  a  walk ;  the  air 
of  Devil's  Island  will  do  you  good."  And  linking  my 
arm  in  his  I  led  him,  still  groaning  inarticulately  about 
God-and-man,  to  the  summit  of  a  promontory  from 
which  one  looked  at  a  vast  expanse  of  sea  and  sky. 

"This,"  I  said,  "is  my  favourite  point  of  view.  Yonder 
is  the  sun,  sinking  beneath  the  ocean  floor.  The  clouds 
are  edged  with  crimson  fire ;  the  breeze  awakens,  and 
the  eagle  in  the  upper  air,  like  the  tireless  messenger 
of  heaven,  wings  his  steady  flight  for  Chimborazo." 

"  Metaphysics ! "  cried  the  man,  now  in  the  very 
crisis  of  the  omniscient  fit,  "metaphysics,  and  bad 
metaphysics  at  that !  Throw  your  metaphysical  eagles 
to  your  metaphysical  dogs  1  A  pin  for  your  '  favourite 
point  of  view ' !  Stick  to  the  plain  fact  of  the  All, 
and  prate  no  more  of  'points,'  either  of  *  view '  or 
anything  else.  Flowers  in  crannied  walls,  Chimborazos, 
clouds  edged  with  crimson  fire — have  done  with  your 
mystical  flummery  1  Vain  abstractions !  Metaphors 
masquerading  as  facts  !     Impotent  strivings  to  escape 


DEVIL'S   ISLAND  167 

from  the  One  !  Airy  nothings  dressed  out  in  pompous 
words  !  Oh,  my  young  friend,  if  only  you  would  spend 
one  short  week  among  the  honest,  plain-dealing  people 
of  our  islands !  Try  on  them  your  high-flown  nonsense 
about  seas  and  sunsets,  and  they  will  have  you  down 
from  your  metaphysical  perch  in  a  twinkling.  No,  sir, 
it  wouldn't  work  with  men  who  know  things  root  and 
all  and  all  in  all." 

"  What ! "  I  said.  "  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  the 
people  on  your  islands  can't  recognise  the  Flower  when 
they  see  it  ? " 

"Oh,"  he  cried,  "we've  been  through  that  on  the 
Isles  of  Omniscience.  We  had  our  metaphysical  period 
like  the  rest  of  you  ;  and  for  ages  too  long  to  measure 
our  philosophers  laboured  in  vain  to  prove  the  existence 
of  the  Flower  in  the  Crannied  Wall.  There  were  even 
mystics  among  us  who  said  they  had  seen  the  Flower 
and  smelt  its  fragrance.  Ah,  how  they  used  to  prate  of 
their  vision  !  But  when  plain  men,  who  knew  the  All, 
challenged  them  to  show  the  Flower,  how  helpless  they 
were !  '  I  have  never  seen  it,'  cried  one  of  our  plain 
men;  'I  have  swept  the  All  with  my  telescope  and 
found  the  All  everywhere,  full  and  perfect  in  a  hair  as 
heart,  but  no  vestige  of  a  flower  or  a  crannied  wall  did  I 
ever  see.  I  have  also  heard  your  arguments  for  its  exist- 
ence, both  a  priori  and  a  posteriori,  and  have  tested 
them  by  experience,  and  found  no  tittle  of  confirmation 
anywhere.'  And  all  these  mystics  could  answer  was, 
'Trust  the  experience  of  those  who  have  seen  the 
Flower  and  sat  on  the  Crannied  Wall.' " 

"  That  great  man  of  yours  who  swept  the  All  with 
his  telescope,"  I  said,  "  must  have  been  a  muddle-headed 
fellow  to  give  himself  away  in  the  language  you  quote. 


168  THE   ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

What  did  he  mean  by  saying  that  he  found  the  All 
full  and  perfect  *  in  a  hair  as  heart '  ?  If  he  found  the 
All  full  and  perfect  in  each  of  them  he  would  see  no 
difference  between  the  two.  What,  then,  made  him 
call  the  one  *  a  hair '  and  the  other  '  a  heart '  ? " 

"  A  mere  concession  to  the  deficiencies  of  language," 
he  replied.  "Language  was  made  before  people  had 
learnt  to  think ;  it  belongs  to  the  period  when  the  mind 
was  plunged  in  the  metaphysical  darkness  of  the  flower 
and  the  crannied  wall.  The  consequence  is  that  we 
are  compelled  to  use  metaphysical  metaphors  such  as 
'  a  hair '  or  *  a  heart '  for  expressing  even  the  simplest 
apprehensions  of  the  All." 

"  But,"  I  said,  '*  I  don't  see  what  you  want  with  two 
of  them.  And  since  you  pass  both  '  hair '  and  '  heart ' 
I  can't  understand  why  you  won't  allow  '  the  flower ' 
and  'the  crannied  wall'  as  well,  and  so  have  four 
metaphors,  or  any  number  for  the  matter  of  that." 

"  And  so  we  should,"  he  replied,  "  if  those  rascals  on 
the  mainland  would  treat  them  all  alike.  But  they 
will  pick  and  choose.  They  get  hold  of  some  metaphor 
that  sounds  prettier  than  the  others,  like  that  of  the 
flower,  and  because  of  its  prettiness  they  forget  it's  a 
metaphor  and  set  it  up  for  something  real.  Now 
nobody  would  lose  his  head  in  this  way  about  *  a  hair ' 
or  '  heart,'  and  that's  why  our  great  man  was  justified 
in  using  such  terms." 

"  You've  not  removed  my  difficulty,"  I  said.  "  How- 
ever, tell  me  this.  Is  there  any  difference  in  your 
islands  between  a  hairdresser  and  a  cardiac  specialist  ? " 

"  Only  as  distinctions  of  thought,"  he  answered. 
"  There  is  no  difference  in  being." 

I   could  think  of  no  reply  to   this   argument.     So, 


DEVIUS  ISLAND  169 

remembering  the  old  men  who  went  up  the  mountain 
to  worship  Benamuckee,  I  turned  to  my  omniscient 
visitor  and  said  simply,  "  O  ! " 

"  Who  more  than  I  has  reason  to  speak  of  these 
things,"  he  went  on,  "  for  have  I  not  been  through  it 
all?  Am  not  I  the  man  at  whom  they  pointed  and 
said,  '  There  goes  one  intoxicated  with  the  Flower- 
Consciousness '  ?  Indeed,  I  have  had  my  visions  and 
spoken  in  tongues.  The  strange  gibberish  comes 
back  to  me  even  now.  '  A  simple  primrose  by  the 
river's  brim'  I  would  babble.  'Trees  are  green,  pigs 
grunt,  aloes  are  bitter,  it's  hard  work  pulling  the  cart 
up-hill,'  and  so  on  in  endless  maundering,  till  the  honest 
folk  of  our  islands  deemed  me  mad." 

I  must  confess  that  up  to  this  point  I  had  never 
doubted  that  I  should  ultimately  succeed  in  putting 
my  omniscient  visitor  to  confusion  and  forcing  him  to 
admit  that  he  was  a  fraud.  He  had  seemed  in  a  state 
of  metaphysical  intoxication,  and  therefore  deprived 
of  right  reason ;  and  I  had  waited  to  deliver  the  final 
blow  until  he  should  return  to  his  senses  and  converse 
like  a  rational  being.  But  these  last  remarks  of  his, 
assuming,  as  they  did,  that  it  was  I  who  was  intoxicated 
and  himself  who  was  sober,  reduced  me  to  a  state  of 
helplessness  such  as  I  had  never  before  experienced  in 
any  argument.  How  was  I  to  prove  my  sobriety  or 
his  intoxication  ?  I  saw  the  thing  was  impossible.  I 
had  always  thought  that  a  man  who  took  a  primrose 
by  the  river's  brim  for  a  simple  primrose  and  nothing 
more,  whatever  else  might  be  the  matter  with  him, 
could  not  be  accused  of  being  metaphysically  drunk ; 
while  another  person  who  saw  in  the  primrose  not  the 


170  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

primrose  but  God-and-man,  whatever  good  qualities  he 
might  possess,  could  not  rightly  claim,  pro  tanto,  to  be 
a  plain  man.  Yet  this  was  the  way  in  which  my 
visitor  insisted  on  arranging  the  situation.  And  now 
it  occurred  to  me  that  he  had  just  as  good  a  reason 
to  arrange  it  thus  as  I  had  to  arrange  it  in  the  contrary 
manner.  May  it  not  be,  I  thought,  that  taking  a 
primrose  for  a  primrose  is  nothing  but  the  last  stage  of 
metaphysical  madness,  whereas  the  taking  it  for  God- 
and-man,  the  vision  of  the  Whole  of  Things  displacing 
and  replacing  the  flower,  is  just  the  plain,  normal, 
business-like,  sensible  way  of  dealing  with  the  matter  ? 
May  it  not  be  that  there  is  more  metaphysic  in  Hodge's 
notion  of  a  pig  than  in  the  voiqcri^  vo-qa-icus  of  Aristotle  ? 
Why  not? 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  this  was,  at  all 
events,  the  normal  way  of  regarding  the  matter  in  the 
Isles  of  Omniscience,  and  what  right  had  I  to  treat  the 
mere  accident  that  I  lived  in  Devil's  Island,  and  adopted 
its  ways  of  thought,  as  a  conclusive  reason  for  taking 
the  opposite  point  of  view  ?  Both  points  of  view 
seemed  to  me  equally  tenable  for  island  philosophies  ; 
I  mean,  that  whichever  of  the  two  you  take,  you  only 
need  an  island  sufficiently  far  from  the  islands  where 
the  other  is  taken  to  have  all  the  grounds  you  want 
for  ascribing  plain  sense  to  your  own  islanders  and 
mysticism  to  the  rest  of  the  Archipelago.  I  reflected, 
however,  that  while  both  of  them  might  be  tenable 
on  islands,  neither  of  them  could  be  adopted  on  the 
mainland  ;  at  least  not  without  great  inconvenience 
and  perhaps  disaster,  because  the  controversy  as  to 
who  was  drunk  and  who  was  sober  would  be  perpetual, 
would  precede   and   overshadow  all  other   discussions. 


DEVIUS   ISLAND  171 

and  would  doubtless  lead,  in  course  of  time,  to  bloody 
quarrels  between  individuals  and  to  wars  of  mutual 
destruction  between  communities. 

While  these  reflections  were  passing  in  my  mind,  a 
change  came  over  my  companion.  I  noticed  that  the 
air  of  strain  and  distress  which  had  accompanied  his 
expositions  of  omniscience  gave  way,  and  he  seemed 
once  more  to  assume  the  mien  of  cheerfulness,  even  of 
jollity,  with  which  he  had  originally  greeted  me. 

"  Let's  go  back,"  he  said,  "  to  your  crannied  wall  and 
take  another  look  at  the  bonny  flower.  I  still  retain 
some  of  the  old  mystical  habits,  and  I  don't  mind 
indulging  them  a  little  during  my  holiday — if  only  for 
the  purpose  of  understanding  the  confusion  of  the 
mystical  consciousness  in  persons  like  yourself.  Now 
that  the  light  has  faded  it  may  be  that  the  flower  will 
look  less  like  God-and-man  than  it  did,  and  it  may  even 
have  some  colour  and  perhaps  a  little  scent.  Besides 
which,  I  should  like  to  hear  more  about  that  boy  you 
mentioned." 

"  Pardon  me,"  I  said.  "  I  would  rather  keep  that 
matter  out  of  the  discussion ;  for  though  1  recognise 
that  you  are  no  longer  in  a  professional  mood,  yet  the 
fact  that  you  are  capable  of  such  moods,  and  may 
therefore  fall  into  one  of  them  again,  makes  me  most 
unwilling  to  mention  the  boy." 

"  Ah  ! "  said  he,  "I  understand.  You  are  afraid  lest 
I  should  treat  the  boy  as  I  treated  the  flower.  You 
don't  want  to  hear  that  the  boy,  like  the  flower,  is  a 
figment  of  your  metaphysics,  a  mystical  illusion 
diverting  your  attention  from  the  All  and  from " 

"  That  will  do,"  I  said.  "  Don't  go  on.  If  you  were 
to  convince  me  of  that  it  would  kill  me.     Or  perhaps 


172  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

I  should  kill  you.     I  can  stand  it  with  the  flower  but 

not  with  the " 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  '*  there  is  nothing  so  strange  as  the 
ineptitude  of  philosophers  in  the  choice  of  illustrations  " 
— ignorant,  apparently,  that  it  was  a  poet  who  had 
chosen  this  one. 

Never  shall  I  forget  the  night  of  horror  which  followed 
this  strange  interview.  For  many  hours  I  lay  awake, 
full  of  troubled  thoughts,  and  when  sleep  overpowered 
me  at  last,  these  thoughts  became  a  nightmare  of 
monstrous  and  appalling  imagery.  I  was  in  the  Isles 
of  Omniscience,  and  there  was  one  by  my  side  who 
would  not  depart.  "  Art  thou  in  Heaven  or  in  Hell  ? " 
he  kept  repeating ;  "  there  shall  be  no  rest  for  thee  till 
thou  knowest."  Evermore  a  weight  oppressed  me, 
and  the  weight  was  the  question  which  I  could  not 
answer — "  Art  thou  in  Heaven  or  in  Hell  ? "  Wherever 
I  turned  I  found  the  All  confronting  me.  Now  it 
would  present  itself  as  a  black  and  solid  sphere  which 
grew  bigger  and  bigger  till  it  filled  space  and  time ; 
and  again  it  would  shrink  to  the  dimensions  of  the 
tiniest  seed.  As  it  grew,  it  would  crush  me  with  an 
intolerable  pressure  ;  as  it  shrank,  it  forced  me  to  shrink 
with  it,  and  the  rigour  of  the  contraction  was  like  to 
crack  and  comminute  my  bones.  Whether  it  grew  or 
whether  it  shrank,  the  sphere  seemed  in  some  way  to 
identify  itself  with  the  question  that  tortured  my  soul — 
Art  thou  in  Heaven  or  in  Hell?  And  now  the  immensity 
of  this  question  would  appal  me,  and  now  its  littleness 
would  fill  me  with  loathing  or  contempt.  I  tried  to  do 
things,  and  then  the  black  sphere  would  rend  itself 
asunder  and  show  me  the  thing  already  done.     I  tried 


DEVIL'S   ISLAND  173 

to  move  my  limbs,  and  could  not,  for  I  saw  they  were 
already  moved ;  I  tried  to  speak  but  could  utter  no 
sound,  because  everything  was  said.  Great  processions 
came  marching  out  of  eternity ;  among  them  was  one 
dressed  out  in  scarlet,  which  I  recognised  as  my  own 
sins.  As  they  approached  they  became  fused  into 
a  river  of  blood ;  the  black  sphere  bulged  out  towards 
them,  becoming  horribly  lopsided,  and  then,  having 
lapped  up  the  scarlet  stream  to  the  last  drop,  suddenly 
recovered  its  spherical  shape  and  began  expanding  to 
its  largest  and  contracting  to  its  smallest  with  incredible 
rapidity,  as  though  it  had  eaten  food  and  were  refreshed. 

Blank  misgivings,  nameless  fears,  horrors  of  nothing, 
storms  of  panic,  swept  over  me  in  an  endless  flood. 
Presently  I  would  see  what  I  was  afraid  of  The  firma- 
ment was  falling  down  on  my  head ;  the  deeps  were 
rising  to  swallow  me  up.  And  then  I  would  burst 
out  of  it  all  into  scenes  acted  on  a  stage.  Two  men 
were  fighting  a  duel,  and  I  was  one  of  the  seconds. 
I  was  loading  a  pistol  for  my  man,  when  the  other 
second  stepped  up  to  me  and  said,  "  These  fellows  know 
how  the  affair  will  end."  "Then,"  I  answered,  "there 
can  be  no  fair  fight."  Whereupon  the  two  principals 
laughed  and  cried,  "  Precisely ;  we  knew  it  would  come 
to  this."  And  the  problem  was,  "  Ought  I,  or  ought  I 
not,  to  have  foreseen  the  turn  events  would  take?" 
Then  a  dirty  fellow  from  the  pit  of  the  theatre  called 
out  "Try  a  Many  and  One,"  and  threw  a  halfpenny 
cigarette  on  to  the  stage. 

I  was  walking  in  a  procession  of  old  men  who  were 
climbing  a  steep  mountain.  When  we  reached  the  top 
all  of  us  said  "O"  to  Benamuckee,  and  then  Benamuckee 
said  "  O  "  to  us.     I  asked  one  of  the  old  men  what  was 


174  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

the  good  of  this  ?     He  answered,  "  O,  all  is  O  and  O 
is  all." 

I  was  in  a  merchant's  office,  with  an  enormous  book 
before  me  full  of  figures,  which  I  was  trying  to  add  by 
the  rule  that  the  totals  were  in  each  of  the  items  and 
each  item  in  the  totals.  Panic  seized  me,  and  I  rushed 
away  crying,  "  Is  there  no  balm  in  Gilead  ?  "  I  came  to 
my  doorstep  and  a  thing  named  the  All  opened  the  door, 
threw  its  arms  around  my  neck,  and  kissed  me.  A 
friend  dropped  in.  What  news  ?  None ;  for  the  All 
is  neither  new  nor  old.  "  Then  why  that  knocking  at 
the  door  ? "  I  asked. 

It  was  the  man  from  the  Isles  of  Omniscience. 
"  YouVe  had  a  bad  night,"  he  said  ;  "  your  groans  have 
been  terrible.  I  suppose  you've  been  dreaming  about 
that  flower.  In  my  opinion  you're  haunted  by  meta- 
physical monsters.  If  so,  be  warned  in  time.  You 
ought  to  try  a  change  of  air.  Come  with  me  for  a  spell 
to  the  Isles  of  Omniscience." 

"Thank  you,"  I  said,  "but  I'm  not  coming.  I've 
done  with  islands.     I'm  going  back  to  the  mainland." 


VIIL— SELF-DEFEATING  THEORIES 


There  never  was  a  philosophy  without  an  end  in  view. 
The  philosophical  knight-errantry  which  goes  out  in 
quest  of  Truth,  sublimely  indifferent  to  the  form  that 
Truth  may  assume,  and  equally  content  whether  she 
turn  out  to  be  a  flame-spitting  dragon  or  a  beautiful 
lady,  is  a  thing  that  exists  only  in  dreams.  Every 
philosopher  knows  what  he  is  looking  for.  We  give 
him  credit  for  all  the  impartiality  the  circumstances 
admit  of,  but  we  cannot  close  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that 
his  selective  attention  is  at  work  all  the  time.  If  by 
an  impartial  philosopher  is  meant  a  person  whose 
attention  to  the  field  of  thought  works  without  selective 
purpose,  then  we  do  not  hesitate  to  say  there  never 
has  been,  and  never  can  be,  an  impartial  philosopher. 
And  there  never  was  a  great  thinker  who  pretended  to 
be  impartial  in  that  sense. 

The  student  of  philosophy  should  use  this  as  a 
test,  and  he  should  apply  it  with  especial  rigour  to 
any  thinker  who  may  protest  that  he  is  indifferent  to 
the  form  of  his  results.  In  every  case  the  student 
will  find  that  the  philosopher  has  an  object — he  wants 
something,  perhaps  a  certain  kind  of  world ;  he  is 
looking  for  something,  perhaps  a  rule  of  safe-conduct 
through  life ;  he  is  after  something,  perhaps  a  particular 

176 


176  THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

kind  of  intellectual  satisfaction,  or  even  a  particular  set 
of  emotions.  Well,  does  his  system  give  him  what  he 
wants,  enable  him  to  find  what  he  is  looking  for;  or 
does  it  end  in  giving  him  something  that  he  doesn't 
want,  in  his  not  finding  what  he  undertook  to  find  but 
something  else  ?     This  is  a  fair  test. 

The  test  will  never  fail  to  yield  important  results, 
for,  as  we  have  said,  there  is  no  philosophy  without  an 
end  in  view.  No  matter  how  the  thing  is  evaded,  or 
wrapped  up,  philosophy  shares  with  life  the  inability 
to  advance  one  step  without  selecting  its  path,  though 
often  at  a  great  risk.  The  "  ends  "  of  the  thinker  are 
many,  as  are  also  the  ends  of  life.  To  say  this  is  not 
to  impugn  philosophy;  on  the  contrary,  we  thereby 
claim  philosophy  as  a  genuine  vital  experience.  As 
we  cannot  live  without  bias,  so  neither  can  we  think 
without  selection. 

Testing  thought  by  its  own  results,  one  cannot  but 
be  struck  by  the  existence  of  many  self-defeating 
theories.  By  a  self-defeating  theory  is  meant  a  theory 
which,  when  accepted,  thwarts  the  purpose  or  destroys 
the  interest  it  was  originally  put  forth  to  serve.  Ad- 
mitting that  the  thinker's  purpose,  implied  or  avowed, 
is  always  the  enrichment  of  experience,  we  must  not 
too  hastily  pass  on  to  the  statement  that  the  process 
of  reflection  does  de  facto  enrich  the  experience  of  every 
person  who  reflects.  There  seems  to  be  some  confusion 
between  the  two  statements.  Enrichment  may  be 
the  purpose,  but  impoverishment  may  be  the  actual 
result,  of  the  thinker's  work.  If  the  process  of  reflection 
leads  us  to  an  honest  belief  that  the  Good  is  the 
pleasant,  that  the  Beautiful  is  the  useful,  that  the  world 
is  a  fortuitous  concourse  of  atoms,  that  human  life  is 


SELF-DEFEATING  THEORIES  177 

"  ruled  by  chance,"  it  is  by  no  means  self-evident  that 
our   experience    as    a  whole  is   "enriched"   by    these 
results.     Persons  who  have  come  to  more  "  enriching  " 
conclusions   will   no   doubt   be   tempted   to   treat   our 
impoverishment  as  due  to  the  arrested  development  of 
our  thought ;   they  will  accuse  us  of  having  stopped 
too  soon ;  they  will  say  we  have  not  reflected  enough. 
But  this,  of  course,  will  merely  lead  to  our  addressing 
a  tu  quoque  to  our  accusers.     To  assert  that  a  "re- 
flected" experience  is  always  richer  than  its  opposite, 
that  we  are  always  better  off*,  therefore,  when  reflection 
is  complete,  may  be  true ;  but  it  will  be  found,  as  we 
shall  endeavour  to  show  in  the  sequel,  to  involve  a 
very  big  assumption  as  to  the  ultimate  character  of  an 
experience.     For  the  present  we  shall  do  well  to  con- 
fine ourselves  to  the  matter  of  fact  by  asking  how  far 
certain  theorists,  who  avowedly  seek  "  enrichment "  on 
particular  lines,  do  actually  succeed  in  getting  what 
they  seek.      We  shall  find  that  they  frequently  fail. 
Thus  there  are  theories  of  religion  which  kill  religion ; 
there  are  theories  of  happiness  which  would,  if  received, 
make  the   recipient   profoundly    unhappy;    there    are 
theories   of  conduct   which  prompt   men  to   rebellion 
against  the  principles  of  morality  ;  there  are  theories  of 
freedom  which  would  cause  us  all  to  regret  that  we 
were  free ;  and  again  there  are  predictions — about  the 
future   course    of   evolution   and   such   like — the   bare 
mention  of  which  sets  us  scheming  with  all  our  might 
to   prevent  them  from  coming  true.     These  theories 
are  intended  to  make  us  more  interested  in  Religion, 
Morality,  Happiness,  Freedom  ;  they  end  by  making 
us  less  interested.     Therefore  they  are  self-defeating. 

Again,  there  are  Cosmologies  which  set  out  to  explain 

12 


178  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

the  Universe  and  end  by  explaining  something  which, 
whatever  else  it  may  be,  is  certainly  not  the  Universe. 
And,  once  more,  there  are  theologies  which  raise  our 
hopes  by  undertaking  to  prove  the  existence  of  God  and 
do  indeed  succeed  in  proving  the  existence  of  something. 
But  this  something  whose  existence  is  proved  turns 
out  again  on  examination  to  be  very  different  not  only 
from  what  the  reader  means  by  God  but  from  what  the 
theologian  himself  meant  when  he  first  undertook  his 
task.  When  the  theologian  began  he  meant  by  God 
what  we  all  mean  when  we  spell  that  name  with  a 
capital  letter  and  pronounce  it  with  reverence ;  by  the 
time  the  proof  ends,  however,  the  meaning  of  the  term 
may  have  become  so  changed — changed,  indeed,  by  the 
very  process  of  proof — that  there  is  no  longer  any 
need  to  spell  it  with  a  capital,  or  pronounce  it  with 
any  reverence  whatsoever.  The  God  about  whom  our 
hopes  were  raised  was  God  ;  the  thing  whose  existence  is 
proved  may  be  a  phrase,  a  concept,  an  idol  of  the  mind ; 
or,  more  simply,  an  idol.  It  is  futile  to  pretend  that 
we  are  satisfying  the  seeker  after  God,  that  we  are 
giving  him  what  he  wants  to  find,  if  all  we  can  give 
him  is  some  hypothesis  that  accounts  for  the  Universe. 
Nobody  can  say  his  prayers  to  a  hypothesis,  even  though 
it  accounts  for  the  Universe  ;  nobody  can  shed  tears  of 
repentance  in  its  presence  or  call  upon  it  in  time  of 
trouble.     These,  too,  are  self-defeating  theories. 

After  prolonged  study  of  many  such,  one  gets  a 
strange  impression.  The  impression  is  that  the  Universe 
is  full  of  secrets  which  fulfil  a  very  useful  office  so  long 
as  they  are  kept  secrets,  but  which  cease  to  do  their 
appointed  task  the  instant  they  are  found  out.  The 
resultant  feeling  is  one  of  regret  that  the  philosopher 


SELF-DEFEATING   THEORIES  179 

has  been  so  candid  as  to  communicate  his,  discovery. 
It  is  as  though  a  very  dangerous  cat  had  been  let  out  of 
the  bag.  "  Would  it  not  have  been  better,"  we  say  to 
ourselves,  "  to  keep  this  useful  secret  dark  ? " 

1.  Among  many  instances  that  might  be  given  we 
will  first  consider  Hedonism.  With  Hedonism  as  a 
moral  theory  we  have  here  nothing  to  do ;  let  us  only 
glance  at  its  results.  Suppose,  then,  with  the  Hedonist 
that  happiness  is  the  true  end  of  life  and  that  the 
promotion  of  happiness  is  the  whole  duty  of  man. 
Not  many  Hedonists  have  thought  it  worth  while  to 
inquire  whether  they  themselves  are  promoting  happi- 
ness by  letting  this  particular  secret  out  of  the  bag. 
May  it  not  be  that  the  happiest  man  is  precisely  that 
man  who  doesn't  know  that  he  is  pursuing  happiness ; 
and  may  not  this  piece  of  knowledge,  rashly  communi- 
cated by  the  Hedonist,  be  the  means  of  putting  the  man 
at  odds  with  himself  in  a  most  distressing  manner  ? 
Most  Hedonists  admit  that  the  less  a  man  thinks  about 
happiness  the  brighter  are  his  prospects  of  success. 
Why,  then,  should  they  take  such  elaborate  pains  to 
make  him  think  about  it?  If  the  Hedonist  would 
cease  his  argument,  this  not-thinking  about  happiness, 
which  is  so  essential  for  its  attainment,  would  be  easier 
for  all  of  us.  Psychologically,  therefore,  the  disclosure 
appears  to  be  a  mistake. 

And  there  are  other  reasons  for  regretting  it,  of  which 
we  will  mention  only  one.  The  doctrine  that  happiness 
is  the  end  is  not  the  cheerful  thing  it  seems.  Accepting 
it,  one  can't  resist  a  most  depressing  conviction  that 
human  life  has  been  a  lamentable  failure.  Nor  is  it 
likely  to  be  anything  else.  For,  if  we  were  all  to 
turn  Hedonists  to-morrow,  and  set  to  work  promoting 


180  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

happiness  with  all  our  might,  it  is  extremely  doubtful 
whether  the  amount  of  happiness  so  produced  would 
in  the  long-run  be  sufficient  to  make  any  of  us  very 
happy.  Can  we  doubt,  indeed.  Life  being  what  it  is 
and  Death  being  ever  on  the  watch  to  stalk  its  prey, 
that  any  race  of  beings  which  should  deliberately  devote 
itself  to  the  pursuit  of  its  own  happiness  would  end  in 
the  misery  of  disillusion,  disappointment,  and  defeat  ? 
Supposing  the  happiness-doctrine  to  be  true,  can  we 
respond  to  it  otherwise  than  by  a  somewhat  melancholy 
sigh? 

If  it  be  true  that  the  best  results  in  the  way  of 
happiness  are  obtained  by  those  persons  who  think  they 
are  aiming  at  virtue,  or  beauty  of  character,  or  obedience 
to  God,  then  on  Hedonist  principles  it  must  be  highly 
undesirable  to  make  them  think  that  they  are  aiming 
at  anything  else.  A  Hedonist  who  publishes  his 
theory  is  like  a  conjurer  who  betrays  his  profession 
by  explaining  to  the  public  how  the  thing  is  done. 
On  his  own  showing  he  ought  to  drown  his  book ;  for 
surely  a  doctrine  which  is  only  practicable  when  for- 
gotten is  a  doctrine  that  ought  never  to  be  divulged. 
In  this  connection  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  quote 
from  a  letter  written  years  ago  by  a  person  who  had 
made  a  close  study  of  the  literature  of  Hedonism. 
"  The  very  name  of  Happiness,"  he  said,  "  now  gives 
me  a  feeling  of  nausea.  And  of  one  thing  I  am  firmly 
resolved,  ('ome  what  may  " — the  reader  will  recognise 
the  attitude — "come  what  may,  I  will  not  work  for 
the  Greatest  Happiness  of  the  Greatest  Number ;  and 
if  any  friend  of  mine  has  the  bad  taste  to  work  for 
my  happiness  I  will  cut  him  on  the  spot.  Of  this,  I 
say,  I  am  resolved;  and  if  I  must  go  to  Hell  for  so 


SELF-DEFEATING  THEORIES  181 

resolving,  then  to  Hell  I  will  go.  I  owe  this  resolu- 
tion to — you  know  whom."  It  needs  perhaps  to  be 
pointed  out  that  the  author  of  these  remarks  was 
neither  a  murderer  nor  an  incendiary,  but  a  most 
estimable  citizen  of  no  mean  city. 

2.  With  the  "  Paradox  of  Hedonism "  we  may 
compare  the  less  noticed  "  Paradox  of  Prediction,"  to 
which  allusion  has  been  made  in  another  essay.^  The 
"  Paradox  of  Prediction "  may  be  expressed  by  the 
rule — **  If  you  want  your  predictions  to  come  true,  keep 
them  to  yourself."  Prediction  of  what  is  going  to 
happen  in  human  affairs  differs  from  prediction  about 
the  course  of  inanimate  Nature  in  the  highly  important 
fact  that  the  former  kind  frequently  provokes  a  success- 
ful conspiracy  against  its  fulfilment  among  the  persons 
whose  interests  are  affected.  When  this  happens  the 
prediction  is  self-defeating.  Thus  it  is  a  highly  danger- 
ous thing  to  forecast  what  social  evolution  is  going  to 
bring  about  unless  you  are  sure  that  the  social  beings 
interested  in  the  result  have  no  power  to  break  the 
evolutionary  entail  whose  secrets  you  are  disclosing. 
In  presence  of  such  a  power  these  predictions  should 
not  be  dignified  with  the  name  of  prophecy ;  for  they 
are  nothing  better  than  ill-considered  blabbing.  Indeed, 
all  prophecy  of  this  sort  that  would  be  successful 
should  be  carried  on  in  an  unknown  tongue ;  and  this, 
we  believe,  has  been  the  invariable  practice  of  experts. 

3.  A  third  instance  of  a  self-defeating  theory  is 
provided,  if  I  rightly  understand  it,  by  a  famous  passage 
of  the  late  William  James  ^ — a  philosophical  genius  to 
whom  in  general  the  present  writer  can  only  profess 

1  See  the  essay,  ^^  Is  there  a  Science  of  Man  ? " 

2  The  Will  to  Believe,  p.  180  seq. 


182  THE  ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

his  veneration  and  indebtedness.  In  this  passage, 
James,  with  his  usual  incisiveness,  suggests  a  mode  of 
reconciUng  Free-will  with  the  idea  of  an  overruling 
Providence.  We  are  asked  to  contemplate  a  game  of 
chess  in  which  the  players  are  a  Moral  Providence  on 
one  side  and  a  free  humanity  on  the  other ;  Providence 
being  a  consummate  player  and  humanity  a  novice. 
The  consummate  player  knows  all  the  possible  moves 
his  antagonist  may  take,  but  which  particular  moves 
he  will  take  at  any  given  turn  in  the  game  has  been 
left  a  matter  of  chance.  Here  is  the  opening  for  Free- 
will ;  which,  however,  does  not  endanger  the  final 
result.  For  Providence,  knowing  all  the  possibilities, 
has  so  arranged  them,  and  is  so  sure  of  its  own  ability 
to  play  the  winning  game,  that  come  what  may,  it  is 
going  to  win  and  bring  all  right  at  last.  Thus  man 
enjoys  a  measure  of  freedom  on  the  one  hand ;  and,  on 
the  other,  the  ends  of  Providence  are  secured. 

This  is  highly  ingenious  ^ ;  but  on  examination  it 
turns  out  to  be  another  instance  of  letting  in  daylight 
on  a  matter  which  ought  to  be  kept  profoundly  dark. 
For  if  this  figure  correctly  describes  the  working 
arrangements  of  a  moral  world,  it  is  essential  that 
those  arrangements  should  be  known  by  only  one  of 
the  parties  engaged  in  the  game,  namely,  by  the  con- 
summate player.  The  moment  the  novice  is  let  into 
the  secret  the  game  is  up.  So  long  as  the  novice  is 
ignorant  that  his  consummate  antagonist  is  sure  to  win, 
and  thinks  he  has  a  chance  of  winning  himself,  he  plays 
for   all   he  is  worth,  and   the   game   goes   on   briskly 

1  Dr  Hastings  Rashdall  says  :  "  This  is  perhaps  the  best  attempt  that 
has  ever  been  made  to  deal  with  the  difficulty."  The  Theory  of  Good 
and  Evil,  vol.  ii.  p.  343. 


SELF-DEFEATING  THEORIES  188 

enough.  But  when  the  philosopher  comes  along  and 
whispers  in  his  ear  the  true  state  of  the  case,  namely, 
that  play  as  he  will  the  issue  is  pre-determined  in  favour 
of  the  other  side,  the  interest  of  the  novice  instantly 
vanishes ;  he  perceives  that  he  is  being  mocked  by  a 
bogus  game ;  he  refuses  to  make  another  move,  and 
rises  from  the  table,  not,  perhaps,  without  addressing 
a  few  uncompHmentary  remarks  to  the  consummate 
antagonist  who  has  inveigled  an  innocent  beginner 
like  himself  into  a  fool's  business  of  this  sort.  It  is 
obvious  that  philosophy  here  plays  the  part  of  the 
serpent  in  the  Garden  of  Eden  by  inducing  the  human 
subject  to  eat  of  the  Tree  of  Knowledge,  of  which  in 
a  world  so  arranged  it  is  evidently  intended  that  he 
should  not  eat. 

4.  The  last  example  is  from  Professor  A.  E.  Taylor  s 
Elements  of  Metaphysics  (p.  399) : — 

"  My  own  conclusion,  then,  which  I  offer  to  the  reader  simply 
as  my  own,  is  that  anything  less  than  the  Absolute  is  an  inadequate 
object  of  religious  devotion,  and  that  the  Absolute  itself  has  the 
structure  which  such  an  object  requires.  If  it  should  be  further 
suggested  that  at  any  rate,  when  we  come  to  actual  experience, 
we  find  that  we  cannot  represent  the  object  of  our  worship  to 
ourselves  in  an  individual  form  of  sufficient  concreteness  to  stir 
effectual  emotion  and  prompt  to  genuine  action  without  clothing 
it  in  imagination  with  anthropomorphic  qualities  which  meta- 
physical criticism  proves  inapplicable  to  the  infinite  individual,  I 
should  be  inclined  to  reply  that  I  admit  the  fact.  And  I  do  not 
think  we  need  shrink  from  the  conclusion  that  practical  religion 
involves  a  certain  element  of  intellectual  contradiction.  Thus, 
though  God  is  not  truly  God  until  we  deny  the  existence  of  any 
independent  '  evil '  by  which  His  nature  is  limited,  it  seems  probable 
that  the  thought  of  ourselves  as  '  fellow-workers  with  God '  would 
hardly  lead  to  practical  good  works  unless  we  also  inconsistently 
allowed  ourselves  to  imagine  God  as  struggling  against  a  hostile 


184  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

power  and  standing  in  need  of  our  assistance.  But  this  only 
shows  that  the  practical  value  of  religion  in  guiding  action  is  not 
necessarily  dependent  on  its  scientific  truth." 

If  this  is  the  scientific  truth  about  Religion,  the 
conclusion  we  feel  inclined  to  draw  is,  not  with  Professor 
Taylor  that  the  practical  value  of  religion  doesn't 
depend  on  its  scientific  truth,  but  that  the  two  things 
cannot  be  made  to  live  in  the  same  house  or  within  sight 
of  each  other ;  for  where  the  one  comes  it  is  obvious 
that  the  other  must  go.  The  presence  of  an  element 
of  make-believe  is  certainly  no  barrier  to  worship  so 
long  as  the  worshipper  is  unaware  of  his  own  feigning. 
So  long  as  the  make-believe  is  unknown  for  what  it  is 
the  worship  may  go  on.  But  the  situation  is  entirely 
changed  when  the  worshipper,  thanks  to  Professor 
Taylor's  book,  is  informed  of  what  he  is  doing  and 
learns  the  nature  of  the  trick  he  is  playing  on  his  own 
mind.  To  worship  a  figment  is  one  thing ;  to  worship 
a  figment  found  out  is  quite  another,  representing, 
unless  we  are  mistaken,  neither  more  nor  less  than  a 
psychological  impossibility.  For  our  own  part  we  can 
only  say  that  if  we  accepted  Professor  Taylor's  view 
we  should  not  go  to  church.  The  wonder  is  to  find 
anyone  supposing  that  information  of  this  kind  will 
persuade  other  people  to  go.  Perhaps  we  are  wrong 
in  supposing  that  this  passage  is  written  in  the  interests 
of  practical  religion.  If  it  is,  we  can  only  say  that  it 
affords  one  more  instance  of  a  self-defeating  theory. 

II 

"In  all  the  wide  world  of  things  that  challenge 
reflection,"  says  the  Plain  Man,  "there  is  nothing  so 
wonderful,  and  nothing  which   ultimately  becomes   so 


SELF-DEFEATING  THEORIES  185 

illuminating,  as  our  faith  in  the  beneficence  of  pro- 
gressive thought.  Is  it  not  an  amazing  thing  that 
men  should  select  the  thinker  as  the  one  person  upon 
whom  no  restraints  are  to  be  imposed  ?  Admitting  to 
the  full  all  that  can  be  claimed  for  him  as  a  Builder, 
who  will  deny  that  his  power  as  Destroyer  is  equally 
great  ?  In  both  respects  his  work  may  be  beneficent, 
but  in  the  second  he  is  terrible  as  the  winds  of  God. 
Where  will  you  find  so  dangerous  a  person  as  he? 
He  is,  and  he  has  been,  the  Prince  of  the  Disturbers 
of  Peace.  It  is  he  who  allows  humanity  no  rest.  He 
is  the  chief  wrecker  of  the  works  of  man.  He  troubles 
all  waters ;  renders  ancient  rivers  undrinkable,  and 
drops  his  philtres  into  every  well.  A  social  order 
which  has  been  a  thousand  years  in  the  building  he 
can  shatter,  as  Heine  says  Kant  did,  by  a  few  strokes 
of  his  pen.  '  Beware,'  says  Emerson,  *  when  the  great 
God  lets  loose  a  thinker  on  this  planet.  Then  all  things  "^ 
are  at  risk.  It  is  as  when  a  conflagration  has  broken 
out  in  a  great  city,  and  no  man  knows  what  is  safe,  or 
where  it  will  end.'  Who  can  tell  what  the  thinker 
will  be  after  next  ?  Who  can  tell  on  whose  roof-tree 
his  lightnings  will  fall,  or  on  what  deepest  interest 
his  tempests  will  be  let  loose? 

"Yet  he  is  the  one  who  claims  liberty  in  widest 
measure,  and  gets  what  he  claims.  He  is  the  one 
to  whom  humanity  gives  a  blank  cheque  on  its  moral 
and  religious  capital.  He  is  the  one  to  whose  mercies 
we  all  submit.  On  the  face  of  it  there  is  no  vocation 
of  man  which  stands  so  sorely  in  need  of  justification 
as  does  that  of  this  same  thinker.  But  challenge  him 
on  the  subject,  and  you  will  find  nine  times  out  of 
ten  that  he  is  dumb.     There  is  no  devourer  of  widows' 


186       THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

houses,  there  is  no  robber  of  shrines,  who  has  less  to 
say  for  himself  than  he.  'Justify  my  calling  to  the 
world  ? '  he  cries,  at  length.  *  Who  ever  heard  of  such 
an  insolent  demand  ?  Was  not  a  charter  to  go  where 
I  will  given  to  me  at  the  foundation  of  the  world? 
Who  ever  doubted  the  beneficence  of  Truth  V  So  he 
is  apt  to  think  himself  exempt  from  all  human  restraint. 
And  so  perhaps  he  is  :  but  upon  what  ground  ? 

"  Amid  much  disagreement  as  to  the  nature  of  truth, 
there  is  one  thing  about  which  we  all  seem  to  agree — 
viz.  that  the  more  we  have  of  it  the  better.  That 
nothing  but  good  can  result  from  the  deepening  of  our 
insight  and  the  extension  of  our  knowledge  seems  to  be 
implied  by  everyone  who  takes  the  trouble  either  to 
support  his  own  opinions  or  to  confute  those  of  other 
people.  Even  the  pessimist  who  holds  that  everything 
is  as  bad  as  it  can  be,  makes  an  exception  in  favour  of 
his  own  book.  The  world  would  be  a  little  worse  than 
it  is,  he  thinks,  if  his  book  were  not  published.  By 
publishing  these  pessimistic  opinions  of  his  he  makes 
one  small  oasis  in  the  desert,  and  thus  does  a  little  good 
— the  only  good,  in  fact,  there  is. 

"  Among  the  powers  which  influence  human  life,  truth 
stands  alone  as  the  object  of  an  unqualified  trust.  To 
no  other  of  the  so-called  '  powers '  of  the  Universe 
do  we  extend  the  same  warm  welcome,  the  same 
ungrudging  hospitality,  the  same  undiscriminating  and 
enthusiastic  acceptance.  Towards  most  of  the  others 
our  attitude  is  essentially  one  of  distrust,  even  of  fear. 
They  come  in  the  form  of  earthquake,  famine,  pestilence, 
conflagration,  sudden  death,  and  they  seem  to  play  us 
the  vilest  tricks.  They  are  ineluctable  and  highly 
dangerous.      On  no  account   are   they  to  be  let  loose 


SELF-DEFEATING  THEORIES  187 

at  any  time  and  in  any  form.  No  one  in  his  senses 
would  throw  away  the  end  of  a  lighted  cigar  and  be 
equally  confident  that  whether  it  fell  into  a  water-butt 
or  a  powder  magazine  the  resulting  developments  would 
do  him  good.  But  the  thinker  is  encouraged  to  fling 
his  brands  about  in  every  direction. 

"  There  is  a  story  about  a  professor  of  physics  who  had 
discovered  a  hitherto  unknown  force  of  Nature,  whereby 
he  was  enabled,  on  pressing  a  button,  to  destroy  a 
city  or  even  a  continent.^  He  lived  in  some  wicked 
Babylon  and  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that,  for  moral 
reasons,  it  would  be  a  good  thing  to  wipe  this  city 
off  the  face  of  the  earth.  So  he  was  just  about  to 
press  the  button  when  the  heroine  rushed  into  his 
laboratory  and  smashed  his  machine.  Most  persons 
would  commend  the  deed  for  saving  the  city  from  the 
destruction  threatened  upon  it  by  the  free-will  of  an 
individual  professor  of  physics.  But  if  some  similar 
Amazon  were  to  invade  the  studies  of  our  Newtons 
or  of  our  Kants  at  the  moment  when  they  were  about 
to  let  loose  some  intellectual  earthquake  on  mankind 
and  burn  the  MSS.  of  the  Principia  or  the  Critiques 
and  knock  the  authors  on  the  head,  should  we  not  all 
agree  that  the  deed  was  ill  done  ? 

"Apparently,  then,  our  Universe  is  so  constituted  that 
while  in  its  physical  aspect  it  cannot  be  trusted  for  an 
instant,  and  is  known  to  contain  a  reservoir  of  im- 
prisoned mischief,  in  its  intellectual  aspect  it  is  not 
only  safe  but  friendly, — nay,  even  bursting  with  the 

1  That  such  a  discovery  is  not  beyond  the  bounds  of  possibility  is 
suggested  by  the  statement  of  Sir  Joseph  Thompson  about  the  forces 
contained  in  the  atom.  See  his  Presidential  Address  to  the  British 
Association,  1909-     Verily,  knowledge  is  power! 


188  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

will  to  bless.  To  be  afraid  of  truth  at  the  present  day- 
is  almost  tantamount  to  being  profane.  If  the  sugges- 
tion were  offered  that  a  philosopher  who  had  discovered 
the  origin  of  evil,  or  the  nature  of  truth,  would  be  well 
advised  in  keeping  the  discovery  to  himself,  the  author 
of  the  suggestion  would  run  a  serious  risk  of  being 
considered  no  better  than  he  ought  to  be.  In  China, 
perhaps,  such  a  man  would  be  esteemed,  and  would 
be  admitted  to  great  honours ;  but  in  the  more  en- 
lightened West  he  would  be  condemned.  Here  people 
are  hunger-bitten  with  desire  to  have  the  truth  let  loose 
upon  them  in  every  form,  and  without  respect  of  time 
or  place ;  and  a  class  of  professional  thinkers  is  main- 
tained for  the  express  purpose  of  so  letting  it  loose. 
Every  gate  that  is  barred  must  be  unlocked,  in  the 
sure  and  certain  faith  that  when  the  cage  is  opened 
a  fat  and  succulent  sheep  will  come  forth  and  walk 
straight  into  the  butcher's  shop.  It  would  be  pro- 
fanity to  suggest  that  the  animal  inside  may  turn  out 
a  hungry  wolf  or  a  hissing  serpent.  Varying  the  figure, 
may  we  not  say  that  the  professional  thinker  is  one 
whom  a  thoughtless  public  encourages  and  even  per- 
secutes into  turning  on  every  tap  from  which  a  single 
drop  of  that  high  explosive  called  truth  can  be  made 
to  flow  ? " 

The  story  is  told  of  a  certain  evangelist  who  once 
prayed  in  public  as  follows :  '*  O  Lord,  save  us  from 
the  perils  of  modern  thought" — and  then,  after  a 
pause  — "  yea,  O  Lord,  deliver  us  from  all  thought 
whatsoever." 

"Well,"  asks  the  Plain  Man,  "why  not?  When 
one  thinks  of  the  desolations  that  have  been  wrought 
in  the  earth  by  the  launching  of  new  ideas,  is  it  not 


SELF-DEFEATING  THEORIES  189 

prima  facie  as  reasonable  to  pray  for  protection  against 
the  unknown  powers  of  truth  as  for  deliverance  from 
shipwreck,  thunderbolt,  or  sudden  death?  Does  any 
of  us  know  enough  about  the  Whole  to  make  him 
dogmatically  certain  that  the  continual  liberation  of 
its  secrets,  by  thinking,  will  conduce  to  the  best  inter- 
ests of  that  extremely  insignificant  part  of  the  Whole 
represented  by  human  life  ?  Have  we  any  means  of 
knowing  in  advance  that  the  nature  of  experience  is 
such  that  its  value  will  be  increased  by  the  revelation 
of  what  it  is  ? " 

There  are  some  things  in  the  life  of  thought  which 
are  their  own  justification.  You  can  criticise  them  only 
by  appealing  to  the  very  principle  you  are  criticising. 
If  you  question  their  truth,  your  question  already 
assumes  they  are  true.  Thinking  cannot  go  behind  its 
own  principles.  If  you  ask.  Why  should  we  think  as 
we  do?  your  question  is  only  another  specimen  of 
thinking,  and  begs  the  answer  before  it  can  be  given. 
All  inquiries  into  the  nature  of  the  Universe  are  based 
on  the  assumption  that  the  Universe  is  worth  inquiring 
about.  We  ask  the  question  because  we  believe  the 
answer  will  pay.  We  reflect  because  we  believe  that 
in  the  upshot  good  will  come  of  it.  Short  of  this 
assumption  there  is  no  reason  why  one  should  think, 
inquire,  doubt,  or  question  anything.  This,  then,  is 
one  of  the  things  in  the  life  of  thought  which  can  never 
be  proved ;  but  if  any  one  denied  it,  we  may  point 
out  to  him  that  his  denial  involves  the  very  principle 
denied. 

That  the  ultimate  truth  of  things  is  good  and  worth 
knowing    is    a    presupposition    which    lies    concealed 


190  THE   ALCHEMY    OF  THOUGHT 

behind  all  the  thinking  of  all  the  world.  We  make  it 
unconsciously  before  we  begin  to  think.  The  public 
make  it  when  they  encourage  us  to  go  on  thinking. 
Faith  in  the  ultimate  soundness  of  the  constitution  of 
things  is  implied  equally  by  the  unquestioning  com- 
placency of  the  philosopher  in  the  pursuit  of  his  task, 
and  by  the  encouragement  to  go  on,  no  matter  what 
the  results  may  be,  which  he  receives  from  the  public. 
The  philosopher  and  his  audience  share  the  same  con- 
viction— that  all  will  turn  out  well  at  the  last.  No  fear 
of  poking  one's  stick  into  a  hornet's  nest,  nor  of  opening 
the  lid  of  some  Pandora's  box,  restrains  the  thinker 
from  pursuing  his  inquiries  or  the  public  from  standing 
by  to  hear  what  will  come  of  it. 

It  is  good  sometimes  to  get  away  from  the  question 
of  what  particular  thinkers  have  taught,  and  to  take 
stock  of  thought  as  one  continuous  movement  going  on 
from  age  to  age.  Let  us  ask  ourselves,  not  what  are 
the  teachings  of  this  philosophy  or  of  that,  but  what  is 
implied  by  the  fact  that  the  process  of  reflection  on 
ultimates  goes  on  deepening  and  broadening  as  the  ages 
pass ;  and  not  only  so,  but  goes  on  with  the  sanction 
and  support  of  every  reasonable  being,  no  man  fearing 
it,  no  one  doubting  but  that  this  Universe  is  so  consti- 
tuted that  the  deeper  you  mine  into  its  secrets  the 
richer  you  will  find  its  gold.  The  very  existence  of 
this  stream  of  thought,  and  the  encouragement  it  re- 
ceives, betokens  a  fundamental  confidence  in  the  last 
issue  of  things.  It  illustrates  on  a  scale  which  is  world- 
wide and  age-long  the  great  saying  of  Paschal,  *'that 
God  is  a  being  whom  we  could  not  seek  had  we  not 
already  found." 

But  if  that  is  so,  philosophy  is  at  once  face  to  face 


SELF-DEFEATING  THEORIES  191 

with  a  paradox.  The  existence  of  philosophy  in  any  or 
all  of  its  varieties  rests  on  the  assurance  that  the  deepest 
truth  of  the  Universe  is  good.  But  if  this  assumption 
is  made  in  advance,  what  is  there  left  to  philosophise 
about?  Is  not  the  very  question  at  issue  that  of 
the  ultimate  goodness  or  badness  of  things?  What, 
pray,  is  a  philosopher  ?  Is  he  not  a  man  appointed 
to  solve  the  question  whether  this  world  is  God's 
or  the  devil's  or  nobody's  ?  Does  not  his  business 
spring  from  doubt  as  to  the  answer  ?  How,  then,  is  it 
possible  without  self-stultification  to  treat  the  question 
as  answered  in  advance  ? 

By  asking  these  questions  in  the  full  earnestness  of 
our  souls  we  bring  ourselves  into  the  presence  of  the 
ne  plus  ultra  of  thought.  We  discover  that  the  very 
process  of  seeking  an  ultimate  world-formula  involves  that 
which  cannot  be  explained  by  us,  but  must  be  left,  like 
Spinoza  s  Substance,  to  explain  itself.  Every  theory 
which  fails  to  recognise  this  is  self-defeating. 

Pessimism  is  such  a  theory.  The  opinion  may  indeed 
be  hazarded  that  there  has  never  lived  a  man  who 
regarded  the  ultimate  badness  of  the  world  as  a  con- 
ceivable truth.  No  world  can  be  ultimately  bad  so 
long  as  it  contains  a  single  being  who  is  capable  of 
knowing  how  bad  it  is.  The  presence  of  one  mind  in 
the  Universe  which  is  capable  of  condemning  it,  of  one 
being  who  is  able  to  say  "  This  is  not  good,"  or  **  It 
might  have  been  better,"  relieves  that  Universe  from 
all  risk  of  being  ultimately  consigned  to  the  black-lists 
of  thought.  For  a  thing  can  only  be  condemned  as 
bad  when  measured  by  some  standard  of  good.  And 
where,  except  in  the  Universe  itself,  do  you  find  that 


192  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

standard  of  good  which  authorises  you  to  condemn  the 
Universe  as  bad  ? 

One  consolation  there  is  which  may  be  received 
forthwith.  If  the  world  is  thoroughly  bad,  it  will  be 
impossible  for  any  of  us  to  find  it  out.  No  world  could 
keep  up  its  reputation  for  badness  in  face  of  the  fact 
that  it  has  produced  out  of  its  own  loins  beings  who 
know  of  something  better  than  itself.  Pessimists  seem 
to  have  a  very  feeble  idea  of  what  kind  of  a  thing  the 
worst  of  all  possible  worlds  would  be.  Surely  a  bad 
world  would  understand  its  own  business  better  than 
to  suffer  the  pessimists  to  publish  its  secrets  and  arm 
mankind  against  itself!  Or,  if  we  assume  with  Mr 
Huxley  that  Nature  is  engaged  in  an  offensive  warfare 
against  the  moral  ideals,  must  we  not  conclude  that 
Nature  blundered  most  egregiously  and  showed  herself 
incompetent  to  conduct  war  either  against  moral  ideals 
or  anything  else  when  she  produced  Mr  Huxley,  armed 
him  with  a  knowledge  of  her  plans,  and  provided  him 
with  the  means  of  spreading  them  broadcast  over  the 
world  ?  A  thoroughly  bad  world  would  assuredly  have 
the  sense  to  keep  its  own  secret.  A  pickpocket  or 
a  burglar  who  himself  sends  for  a  policeman  to  witness 
his  crime  is  not  a  very  dangerous  sort  of  person.  This 
is  precisely  what  Nature  did  when  she  sent  Mr  Huxley 
to  give  the  Romanes  lecture ;  what  the  Universe  does 
when  the  pessimist  finds  it  out.  The  pessimist  is  the 
policeman  whom  the  guilty  Universe  has  produced  out 
of  its  own  loins  for  the  express  purpose  of  witnessing 
its  own  crimes,  apprehending  the  criminal,  and  saving 
the  public  from  his  depredations. 

It  would  be  admitted  that  if  you  want  to  be 
thoroughly  and  successfully  bad  you  must  put  intelli- 


SELF-DEFEATING  THEORIES  193 

gence  into  the  business.  Above  all  things,  you  must 
not  let  people  know  how  bad  you  are.  You  must 
deceive  them.  If  you  go  the  length  of  advertising 
your  own  badness,  as  Nature  does  through  the  voice  of 
the  pessimist,  the  inference  is  that  you  are  not  really 
bad,  but  only  playful.  To  be  seriously  bad,  to  play 
the  game  with  success,  is  on  these  terms  impossible. 
When  once  you  have  labelled  yourself  a  villain  you 
can  do  no  more  villainy,  except  the  people  on  whom 
you  practise  are  more  incredibly  stupid  than  you  are 
yourself.  We  can  attach  no  importance  to  the  bad- 
ness of  a  world  which  allows  its  secrets  to  leak  out. 
As  to  its  being  the  worst  of  all  possible  worlds,  the 
thing  is  ridiculous.  A  bad  world  which  had  the  sense 
to  keep  its  own  counsel  would  be  infinitely  worse  than 
this  one. 

Let  us  assume  that  the  opposite  of  Huxley's  doctrine 
is  true,  namely,  that  Nature  takes  a  friendly  interest  in 
the  moral  ideals  of  man  and  is  anxious  to  help  him  in 
fulfilling  them.  How  would  she  set  about  it  ?  What 
would  she  do  by  way  of  helping  him  ?  Well,  she  would 
be  perfectly  candid  about  herself  and  her  own  failings. 
She  would  show  him  all  the  weak  spots  in  her  own 
arrangements.  She  would  make  him  see  how  badly 
things  would  turn  out  were  the  human  contribution 
withheld.  She  would  confess  that  her  brute  forces  and 
her  laws  of  evolution  and  her  struggles  for  existence 
are  incompetent  to  improve  the  world — nay,  are  certain 
to  disimprove  it  if  left  to  themselves.  By  thus  making 
a  clean  breast  of  it  she  would,  in  fact,  tell  the  story 
which  every  pessimist  tells  on  her  behalf.  But  does 
this  prove  her  bad?     On  the  contrary,  it  proves  that 

she  is  taking  the   only  course   she   can   take  in   order 

IS 


194  THE   ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

to  help  the  beings  who  have  to  set  things  straight. 
What  if  the  story  as  she  tells  it  is  full  of  horror? 
The  more  Nature  dwells  on  her  own  horror  and  ugli- 
ness, the  more  pessimists  she  produces  to  underline  her 
failures  and  waste  and  cruelty,  the  more  certain  she  is 
to  provoke  those  reactions  of  the  will  that  turn  her 
failures  into  success  and  her  ugliness  into  a  garment 
of  praise.  By  thus  helping  us  to  know  the  worst  she 
is  helping  us  to  do  the  best.  In  responding  to  our 
demand  for  information  about  her  character — and 
science  is  nothing  but  such  a  response — Nature  seems 
to  be  acting  on  a  principle  which  is  the  reverse  of  that 
which  the  pessimists  have  assigned  her.  Instead  of 
making  war  on  our  ideal,  she  is  providing  us  with  the 
means  we  need  for  applying  those  ideals  to  facts.  If 
her  intention  were  to  thwart  us,  what  worse  thing 
could  she  do  for  herself  than  she  does  when  she 
answers  our  inquiries  into  her  policy  ?  All  human 
inquiry  assumes  that  the  Universe  is  willing  to  tell. 
That  is  what  no  bad  Universe  would  ever  do. 

I  repeat,  then,  that  our  expectation  of  an  answer 
to  inquiries  implies  an  ultimate  but  quite  unprovable 
confidence  in  the  nature  of  that  concerning  which  we 
inquire.  We  should  not  ask  the  question  unless  we 
were  pretty  sure  that  the  answer  would  pay.  Pessimism 
is  thus  a  crowning  instance  of  a  theory  that  defeats  itself. 
Pessimists  and  optimists  alike,  when  once  they  have 
chosen  to  treat  the  Universe  as  a  Problem-to-be-solved, 
must  play  the  game  up  to  the  last  move. 


IX.— IS   THERE  A   SCIENCE   OF   MAN? 

"  Le  dernier  mot  de  la  verity  restera  toujours  k  dire." — M.  Loisy 

If  there  is  a  Science  of  Man  its  terminology  must  be 
fluid.  Unlike  the  other  sciences  to  which  fixity  of 
meaning  is  essential,^  the  Science  of  Man  must  provide 
for  an  endless  transformation  in  the  meaning  of  its 
terms.  They  must  be  like  water  which  takes  the  form 
of  any  cup  into  which  it  is  poured.  And  the  form  of 
the  cup  must  be  undefined.  We  may  go  further  and 
say  that  the  laws  of  this  science  must  be,  not  merely 
laws  of  life,  but  living  laws.  They  must  be  formulse 
which  retain  their  identity  while  changing  their  form.  If, 
for  example,  we  lay  down  the  Love  of  one's  Neighbour 
as  a  law  of  life,  it  must  be  with  the  reservation  that 
the  beings  to  whom  it  refers  are  not  tied  to  any  fixed 
meaning  either  of  "Neighbour"  or  of  "Love."  The 
question,  "  Who  is  my  neighbour  ? "  is  continually 
answered  and  yet  remains  open ;  so  does  the  ques- 
tion, "What  is  love?"  There  are  perhaps  no  two 
individuals  in  the  world,  there  are  certainly  no  two 
epochs  in  history,  for  whom  the  meaning  of  these  terms 
either  are,  or  ought   to   be,  the  same.      We  may  say 

1  Scientific  terms  are  "fixed"  by  the  purpose  of  science  which 
abstracts  them  from  their  context.  Restored  to  their  full  context 
they  become  as  "fluid"  as  any  others.  See  the  essay  on  "The 
Usurpations  of  Language." 

195 


196  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

of  all  such  principles  that  they  gather  meaning  in 
their  application.  Their  meaning  cannot  be  defined  in 
advance  of  the  performance  to  which  they  refer;  we 
must  wait  upon  events  to  say  what  they  mean. 

Whether  or  no  a  Science  of  Man,  constructed  in  fluid 
or  in  living  terms,  is  possible,  it  is  certain  that  we  can- 
not make  the  same  use  of  it  that  we  make  of  the  other 
sciences.  We  cannot  use  it  to  predict  or  control  the 
behaviour  of  men,  as  we  use  the  others  to  predict  or 
control  the  behaviour  of  the  bodies  or  forces  to  which 
they  refer.  To  those  who  believe  that  the  value  of 
science  lies  in  its  uses  this  difference  is  very  important. 
Indeed,  its  importance  is  so  great  that  confusion  and 
disaster  seem  likely  to  result  from  giving  the  name  of 
Science  to  something  which  differs  so  fundamentally 
from  those  other  bodies  of  doctrine  to  which  the  name 
is  generally  applied.  Since  the  other  sciences  carry  the 
fixity  of  their  terms  into  all  their  applications,  and  are 
indeed  useless  on  any  other  assumption,  it  is  certain 
that  men  in  general  will  assume  a  like  fixity  in  the 
proffered  Science  of  Man ;  the  fluidity  of  its  meanings 
will  be  overlooked ;  expectations  will  arise  which  can 
never  be  fulfilled,  and  efforts  will  be  made  which  are 
bound  to  come  to  grief.  Misled  by  the  term  Science, 
men  will  try  to  make  the  same  use  of  this  doctrine  as 
they  make  of  the  others  to  which  it  is  commonly  ap- 
plied, and  in  so  doing  they  will  wrong  both  their 
neighbours  and  themselves,  and  they  will  encounter 
a  great  disillusion.  From  the  confusion  that  follows 
this  double  usage  it  seems  to  us  that  great  harm  accrues, 
especially  to  Morality  and  Religion. 

Such,  in  brief,  is  the  contention  of  the  two  following 
essays. 


IS  THERE    A   SCIENCE   OF   MAN?  197 

It  is  perhaps  a  truism  that  Theistic  religion  can  exist 
only  among  men  who  are  conscious  of  a  vital  need 
for  God.  "  I  cannot  live  without  Him "  are  words 
which  express  with  essential  accuracy  the  attitude  of 
the  believer's  mind.  If  men  should  come  to  feel  that 
they  can  live,  that  they  can  "get  on,"  as  we  say,  as 
well  without  God  as  with  Him — if,  that  is,  God  should 
ever  seem  to  be  irrelevant  to  the  essential  issues  of 
life,  a  superfluity,  a  luxury,  or  even  a  bare  hypothesis 
— Theism  would  certainly  die.  God  is  either  a  vital 
necessity  or  no-God. 

To  feel  God  as  a  vital  necessity  is  to  feel  that  God 
does  something  for  His  creatures  which  it  is  essential 
should  be  done,  and  which,  if  undone,  leaves  one's  life 
maimed,  incomplete,  and  unsatisfying.  Theism  gains 
nothing,  or  very  little,  by  a  conception  of  God  which 
completes  and  satisfies  our  speculative  thought,  unless 
we  can  show  that  in  so  doing  He  completes  and 
satisfies  our  life  as  a  whole.  To  show  this,  one  would 
have  to  exhibit  some  kind  of  equation  between  thought 
and  life ;  and  it  must  be  confessed  that  important 
tendencies  of  modern  philosophy  are  averse  to  this. 
One  of  the  most  significant  movements  of  contemporary 
thought  is  a  protest  against  the  attempt  to  make  the 
conception  of  God  do  duty  for  God  himself.  The 
protest  is  that  God,  even  if  secured  as  a  logical  necessity, 
would  fall  far  short  of  being  that  vital  necessity  which 
Religion  ever  finds  Him  to  be.  The  word  "  necessity," 
like  the  word  "  reason,"  is  multi-dimensional  and  points 
in  all  directions  towards  satisfactions  which  no  conception 
and  no  system  of  such  can  ever  yield.  There  is,  indeed, 
no  room  in  the  world  for  God,  until  He  is  seen  to 
answer  the  human  need  in  all  the  fulness  of  its  implica- 


198  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

tions,  and  not  alone  in  that  restricted  form  which  is 
adequately  met  by  a  logical  system. 

When  Laplace  described  God  as  a  needless  hypothesis, 
he  meant,  of  course,  that  He  is  needless  for  the  purpose 
of  human  logic — that  the  business  of  science  can  be 
carried  out  without  requiring  at  any  point  a  reference 
to  the  conception  of  God.  This  may  or  may  not  be 
true  ;  but  even  if  true  it  is  not  necessarily  fatal  to 
Theism.  If  it  can  be  shown  that  man  has  vital  needs, 
other  than  the  needs  of  logic,  to  which  God  and  God 
alone  is  the  answer,  then  we  should  always  be  able  to 
plead  that  Humanity  cannot  live  without  God  ;  and 
Theism  would  be  safe.  But  if  this  cannot  be  shown,  if 
we  can  point  to  no  vital  needs  to  which  God  is  the  only 
answer,  or  if  such  vital  needs  as  man  has  are  adequately 
met  by  something  which  is  not  God,  then  indeed  the 
disappearance  of  God  from  the  list  of  our  logical 
requirements,  the  statement  that  He  is  a  needless 
hypothesis,  would  be  the  removal  of  the  last  straw  to 
which  our  drowning  faith  could  cling. 

At  this  point  we  encounter  the  full  force  of  the 
antitheistic  tendencies  of  our  time.  Their  force  lies 
not,  of  course,  in  any  demonstrated  disproof  of  God's 
existence,  but  in  the  claim  that  the  vital  needs  of  man 
are  better  met  and  more  fully  satisfied  by  something 
else.  This  something  else  is  the  Science  of  Man.  If 
all  that  is  hoped  and  all  that  is  claimed  for  the  Science 
of  Man,  as  commonly  understood,  should  ever  be  made 
good,  we  should  be  forced  to  admit  that  there  is  nothing 
that  God  can  do  for  man  which  man  cannot  do  as  well, 
or  better,  for  himself.  God  would  now  become  need- 
less, not  merely  in  the  sense  that  logic  no  longer  requires 
Him,  but  in  the  far  more  serious   sense  that  we  can 


IS  THERE   A   SCIENCE   OF  MAN?  199 

live,  and  get  all  the  good  that  life  has  to  offer,  by 
attending  to  the  teachings  of  science.  All  that  has 
been  expected  of  God  could  now  be  provided  for  by 
the  Science  of  Man.  We  have  only  to  suppose  that 
men  are  fully  possessed  of  the  strategy  of  Nature  and 
the  fixed  laws  which  govern  their  own  lives,  and  it  is 
obvious  that  their  destinies  would  be  in  their  own 
hands,  assuming,  of  course,  that  they  still  retain  the 
power  of  independent  action.  In  such  a  world,  God, 
even  if  we  suppose  Him  to  exist,  would  have  no  func- 
tion :  His  occupation,  so  far  as  this  consists  in  exercising 
beneficent  influence  over  human  life,  would  be  gone. 

We  have  only  to  ask  further  what  precisely  God  could 
do  for  a  being  who  was  thoroughly  master  of  the  science 
of  his  own  life,  to  satisfy  ourselves  that  He  could  do 
nothing.  Could  He,  for  example,  make  us  happier  or 
better  than  we  should  be  without  His  assistance  ?  To 
say  that  He  could  is  to  say  that  there  is  some  outstand- 
ing area  of  our  life  which  we  do  not  understand,  and 
which,  therefore,  must  be  left  to  the  management  of 
Him  who  does  understand  it.  The  existence  of  such 
an  area,  however,  beyond  our  knowledge  and  our  power 
of  choice,  is  incompatible  with  our  possession  of  a 
science  of  life.  Were  such  a  science  ours,  there  would 
be  none  of  these  outstanding  areas,  none  of  these  deeper 
interests,  stretching  beyond  and  beneath  the  limits  of 
our  knowledge  and  therefore  of  our  will.  Just  as  a 
person  perfectly  acquainted  with  the  science  of  bodily 
health  would  never  need  to  commit  his  health  to  the 
care  of  a  doctor,  except,  perhaps,  as  a  matter  of  eti- 
quette or  convention,  so  a  being  or  race  of  beings 
which  had  mastered  the  law  of  its  own  interests  and 
been  equipped  by  science  with  a  complete  set  of  clues 


200  THE   ALCHEMY   OF   THOUGHT 

to  the  path  of  its  betterment,  both  moral  and  material, 
would  obviously  be  able  to  attain  every  one  of  its  desired 
ends  without  any  appeal  to  the  assistance  of  God. 

If,  for  example,  Ethical  Science  should  really  succeed 
in  teaching  us  the  whole  secret  of  becoming  better  men, 
what  need  would  any  of  us  feel  to  ask  God  to  help  him 
in  the  process  ?  To  suppose  the  assistance  of  God  neces- 
sary is  to  suppose  our  ethical  science  incomplete  and 
fragmentary,  and  every  step  we  take  towards  making 
it  complete  brings  us  nearer  to  the  point  at  which,  if  I 
may  so  say,  we  shall  be  able  to  dispense  with  the  appeal 
to  God.  So  long  as  we  are  asking  Him  to  give  us 
clean  hearts,  or  to  show  us  the  path  of  life,  we  are  con- 
fessing that  the  Science  of  Man  doesn't  yet  exist ;  for 
if  it  did  we  should  know  how  to  cleanse  our  own  hearts, 
and  the  path  of  life  would  be  sufficiently  shown  by 
text-books  appropriate  to  the  subject.  With  the  full- 
blown Science  of  Man  at  our  elbow,  we  should  know 
how  to  master  all  the  passions  which  menace  our 
interests,  we  should  know  how  to  avoid  the  ways  of 
destruction  and  death,  we  should  know  exactly  what 
steps  to  take  in  order  that  our  best  possibilities  may 
be  realised  and  our  happiness  fulfilled.  To  admit  that 
there  is  any  one  essential  good  which  our  science  can 
never  teach  us  to  procure,  and  for  the  attainment  of 
which  we  must  look  to  the  help  of  God,  is  to  strike 
the  ground  from  under  the  claims  of  the  Science  of 
Man.  Even  to  hope  for  such  a  science  is  to  hope  for 
a  time  when  the  human  race  will  be  able  to  do  without 
God.  He  will  then  become,  in  a  far  more  serious  sense 
than  Laplace  intended,  a  needless  hypothesis.  For  he 
will  cease  to  be  the  Helper  of  men. 

The  result  is,  of  course,  precisely  the  same,  if  the 


IS   THERE   A   SCIENCE   OF   MAN?  201 

formulge  of  the  Science  of  Man  are  held  to  cover  the 
action  of  the  human  will.  Everything,  our  own  action 
as  well  as  God's,  is  now  provided  for  by  the  fixed  plan 
of  the  universe ;  nothing  further,  or  other,  can  be  done 
either  by  God  or  man,  and  there  is  nothing  for  it  but 
to  wait  upon  events  in  a  wise  passiveness.  By  extend- 
ing the  realm  of  necessity  so  as  to  include  within  it  the 
action  of  the  conscious  will,  we  pass  by  a  single  step 
from  a  state  of  mastery  over  life  into  a  state  of  help- 
lessness. And  it  is  well  to  remember  that  in  a  universe 
whose  ultimate  structure  must  be  always  "taken  as 
read,"  God — if  we  can  now  attach  any  meaning  to  that 
term — would  be  as  helpless  as  we  are.  We  could  only 
think  of  Him  as  the  cosmic  steersman,  paralysed  at  the 
wheel  of  the  universe,  and  therefore,  so  far  as  we  are 
concerned,  a  wholly  negligible  entity.  How  close 
together,  in  the  human  mind,  are  the  two  thoughts  of 
mastery  and  helplessness,  how  rapidly  each  passes  into 
the  other,  may  be  seen  in  the  writings  of  Mr  Herbert 
Spencer,  who  alternately  raises  our  hopes  by  pictures 
of  what  Science  will  enable  us  to  do,  and  then  dashes 
them  to  the  ground  by  exhibiting  some  world-formula 
in  the  grip  of  which  we  are  powerless  to  do  anything. 
More  will  be  said  of  this  hereafter.  For  the  present 
we  have  merely  to  note  that  God  is  equally  superfluous 
on  either  supposition. 

Nor  is  all  this  a  picture  of  what  might  conceivably 
happen  under  conditions  that  are  never  likely  to  be 
realised.  There  is  at  least  one  great  system  of  thought 
which  illustrates  how  men  who  think  themselves 
possessed  of  the  innermost  laws  of  conscious  life  are 
immediately  led  to  dispense  with  God.  The  initiate 
of    a    certain   form   of    Buddhism    claims    to    possess 


202  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

under  the  Law  of  Karma  a  complete  Science  of  Man. 
You  have  only  to  acquire  the  knowledge  of  Karma 
and  your  destiny  at  once  passes  into  your  own  hands. 
Nothing  can  be  done  for  you  better  than  that  which 
you  can  now  do  for  yourself.  And  all  you  can  do 
for  yourself  is  to  attain  the  Gnosis  of  what  is  being 
done  under  the  unalterable  laws  of  the  universe. 
Whether  the  salvation  thus  obtained  deserves  its 
name  may  be  a  matter  of  dispute  ;  but  the  science 
or  Gnosis  of  which  you  are  now  master  entitles 
you  to  say  it  is  the  best  attainable.  Naturally  and 
logically  the  appeal  to  God  is  superfluous  ;  accordingly, 
for  this  kind  of  Buddhism,  God  does  not  exist.  And 
any  kind  of  mystical  initiation  which  equips  the 
believer  with  the  knowledge  he  requires  for  the 
complete  management  of  his  own  life,  whether  by 
way  of  action  or  submission,  involves  the  same  result. 
It  was  characteristic  of  some  of  the  ancient  Mysteries, 
for  example,  that  those  who  had  passed  through  them 
were  wont  thenceforth  to  treat  the  gods  as  con- 
ventions. And  though  it  may  seem  a  far  cry  from 
these  Mysteries  to  modern  science,  yet  a  little  re- 
flection will  serve  to  show  a  striking  resemblance 
between  the  two,  in  that  both  claim  to  equip  man 
with  the  kind  of  knowledge  which  enables  him  not 
only  to  dispense  with  the  gods,  but  even  to  defy 
them,  should  any  gods  happen  to  exist.  We  are  only 
prevented  from  seeing  this  by  our  habit  of  holding 
apart  two  thoughts  whose  significance  depends  on  our 
taking  them  together.  The  first  is  the  thought  of  the 
universe  as  having  a  fixed  strategy  in  regard  to  man ; 
the  second  is  the  thought  of  science  as  informing  man 
of  the  strategy  he  has  to  face.     Hold  these  apart  and 


IS  THERE   A  SCIENCE  OF   MAN? 

their  significance  escapes  you.  Put  them  together — 
think,  that  is,  of  man  as  fully  acquainted  with  the 
strategy  of  the  universe  in  regard  to  himself — and  it  is 
immediately  apparent  that  God  is  no  more  master  of 
the  situation  than  man  is.  Man,  therefore,  can  dispense 
with  God. 

For  these  reasons  it  is  a  matter  of  supreme  import- 
ance to  inquire  whether  the  Science  of  Man  is  possible. 
We  must,  of  course,  take  the  terms  in  their  strict 
meaning.  And  we  shall  not  be  doing  this  if  we  allow 
any  body  of  knowledge  which  has  even  a  remote 
bearing  on  human  interests  to  masquerade  as  the 
Science  of  Man.  We  must  think  of  man  throughout 
as  a  self-conscious  being,  as  a  living  will,  and  ask 
whether  the  interests  of  such  a  being  are  amenable  to 
scientific  definition,  and  whether  the  activities  of  his  will 
in  the  pursuit  of  those  interests  can  be  brought  under 
formulated  laws.  Nothing  short  of  this  is  entitled  to 
rank  as  the  Science  of  Man. 

That  the  intellectual  temper  of  our  time  encourages 
the  belief  in  the  possibility  of  a  Science  of  Man  and  the 
hope  of  its  realisation  in  the  future  admits  of  little 
doubt.  A  state  of  the  world  when  the  system  of 
natural  laws  shall  be  thoroughly  understood  and  when 
all  human  action  shall  be  in  accordance  with  this 
knowledge  is  the  far-off  divine  event  to  which  vast 
numbers  of  persons  are  vaguely  looking  forward. 

This  millennium  of  science  has  been  often  described. 
Physiology  and  its  cognates  will  enable  us  to  control 
our  bodies ;  we  shall  eat  by  science,  dress,  warm  and 
house  ourselves  by  science.  Psychology  will  have 
given  us   command   of    our    minds ;    we    shall   know 


204  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

how  our  intellects,  our  emotions,  our  wills,  act  under 
given  conditions,  and  we  shall  prepare  them  for  acting 
accordingly ;  education  will  be  thoroughly  scientific ; 
we  shall  teach  nothing  but  what  the  laws  of  the  mind 
allow  the  young  to  assimilate,  and  to  assimilate  in  the 
most  favourable  manner.  Society,  too,  will  be  sociologi- 
cally enlightened ;  statesmen  will  know  the  laws  under 
which  communities  develop,  flourish,  and  decay ;  and 
legislation  thus  informed  will  avoid  mistakes.  This  is 
the  kind  of  prophecy  in  which  our  age  likes  to  indulge, 
and  it  seems  to  rest  upon  a  general  assumption  that 
there  is  some  final  body  of  knowledge  concerning  man, 
some  fixed  system  of  laws  as  yet  partially  known  but 
destined  hereafter  to  be  thoroughly  known,  and  that 
the  end  will  have  been  attained  when  this  system  in 
all  its  fulness  is  discovered,  accepted,  and  obeyed. 

In  many  of  its  details  this  dream  will  probably  come 
true.  But  were  it  to  come  true  in  all  it  would  cover 
but  a  fragment  of  the  future  of  the  race.  The  vital 
interests  of  humanity  lie  outside  the  scope  of  the 
picture ;  what  it  tells  is  small  compared  with  what  is 
left  untold.  In  thinking  otherwise  we  are  the  victims 
of  a  false  analogy  which  has  its  source  in  the  one- 
sidedness  of  our  scientific  enthusiasms.  Physical  science 
rightly  assumes  that  if  we  can]  discover  the  rule  under 
which  things  are  behaving  themselves  and  have  behaved 
themselves  up  to  date,  we  have  in  that  rule  a  statement 
of  their  behaviour  under  like  conditions  for  all  time  to 
come.  The  law  of  gravitation  is  not  going  to  change. 
Knowing  that  bodies  attract  each  other  in  such  and 
such  a  way,  we  may  confidently  base  our  dealings  with 
those  bodies  on  the  assumption  that  they  will  always  so 
behave.     We  can   manage  them  on  that  assumption. 


IS   THERE    A   SCIENCE   OF   MAN?  205 

and  there  is  no  risk  that  our  management  will  ever 
miscarry  through  the  body  taking  upon  itself  to  modify 
the  law  of  its  own  action.  And  no  one  needs  to  be 
told  of  the  vast  extent  to  which  our  power  of  manage- 
ment has  already  grown,  and  of  the  incredible  profit  we 
have  won  thereby. 

But  if  we  have  gained  so  much  by  the  manage- 
ment of  mere  physical  masses,  what  should  we  not 
gain  if,  in  like  manner,  we  could  learn  to  manage 
ourselves  and  our  fellow-men  ?  Imagine  a  statesman 
legislating  for  an  empire  under  the  guidance  of  a 
formula  which  defined  with  mathematical  exactitude 
the  relation  between  national  wealth  and  national  well- 
being.  What  immeasurable  powers  for  good  that  states- 
man would  possess  !  Imagine  a  wise  man  in  any  station 
of  life  adjusting  his  relations  to  other  men  by  scientific 
rules  whose  results  were  as  certain  as  the  results  of  burn- 
ing so  much  fuel  under  the  boiler  of  a  steamship  or 
applying  so  much  force  to  the  end  of  a  lever.  Surely 
it  only  needs  that  we  should  learn  to  handle  men  as 
we  handle  the  forces  of  Nature,  and  we  should  become 
masters  of  our  human  destiny  to  a  degree  which  would 
lift  us  to  the  level  of  gods.  And  what  is  to  prevent 
us  from  learning  this  ?  Are  we  not  agreed  that  the 
reign  of  law  is  universal ;  that  what  happens  to  our 
bodies,  that  what  goes  on  in  our  minds,  is  as  surely 
law-abiding  as  the  union  of  two  elements  or  the  fall  of 
a  stone  ?  And  what  save  present  ignorance  deprives  us 
of  the  enormous  power  we  should  possess  if  we  knew 
the  laws  of  human  life  as  we  know  the  laws  of  elements 
and  of  stones  ? 

This  is  the  analogy  which  misleads  our  imagination. 
When  we  say,  for  example,  that  teachers  in  elementary 


THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

schools  must  be  trained  in  psychology,  the  assumption 
too  often  is  that  psychology  has  something  to  say  which 
will  enable  these  teachers  to  control  the  minds  of  the 
taught  in  the  same  sense  that  a  knowledge  of  physics 
enables  an  engineer  to  control  the  speed  of  his  engines 
or  the  resisting  power  of  his  bridge.  When  we  say  that 
politicians  ought  to  be  sociologists,  do  we  not  mean 
that  there  are  fixed  laws  in  human  nature  and  in  history 
with  which  the  legislation  of  the  State  must  be  made  to 
harmonise  ?  Nay,  when  we  say  of  ourselves,  or  of  life 
in  general,  that  right  conduct  is  obedience  to  discover- 
able principles,  are  we  not  conceiving  of  these  principles 
as  existing  things,  laid  down  and  unalterably  formulated 
in  the  very  constitution  of  the  world  ?  Behind  all  this, 
is  there  not  the  notion  that  life  is  an  object  to  be 
handled  by  rule  just  as  you  would  handle  a  spade  or  a 
gun ;  that  man  is  a  being  to  be  managed  by  the  book 
just  as  you  manage  electricity  or  fire?  Are  we  not 
thinking  of  masses  to  be  moved,  of  bodies  which  yield 
to  pressure  and  follow  the  direction  of  the  strongest 
force ;  of  materials  to  be  arranged  in  certain  patterns 
and  to  remain  in  the  positions  that  have  been  assigned 
to  them?  Do  we  not,  I  say,  introduce  into  our 
proposals  for  dealing  with  life  that  notion  of  an  equa- 
tion between  cause  and  effect  which  governs  our 
management  of  things  and  powers  in  the  physical 
world  ?  You  want  your  engine  to  do  more  work :  you 
put  more  steam  into  the  boiler.  You  want  the  com- 
munity to  be  more  honest:  you  put  so  much  energy 
into  the  teaching  of  honesty  in  elementary  schools. 
You  want  the  drawing-room  to  be  more  commodious ; 
you  rearrange  the  furniture.  Well — you  want  Society 
to  stand  on  a  more  equitable  basis,  and  you  readjust 


IS  THERE   A  SCIENCE   OF  MAN?  207 

the  relations  between  man  and  man.  For  is  there  not 
a  pattern  of  the  perfect  State  ? 

In  all  these  things  we  are  apt  to  be  ruled  by  one 
set  of  ideas,  to  be  guided  by  one  set  of  principles.  But 
may  it  not  be  that  we  are  here  classing  together  things 
so  fundamentally  different  that  the  rules  which  give 
us  success  in  the  one  case  may  ensure  our  failure  in 
the  other?  We  would  reform  society,  but  what  if 
society,  unlike  our  drawing-rooms,  is  precisely  of  such 
a  nature  as  to  be  impatient  of  any  form  we  may  impose 
upon  it?  We  would  construct  a  formula  for  the 
government  of  life,  but  what  if  the  essential  principle 
of  life  is  insusceptible  of  formulation  ?  We  would 
manage  men,  but  what  if  man  is  by  nature  a  rebel 
against  all  external  management?  We  would  handle 
him  as  we  handle  matter ;  but  what  if  matter,  by 
growing  into  man,  grew  out  of  the  form  in  which  it 
could  be  handled  at  all  ?  What  if,  as  M.  Bergson  says, 
the  intellect,  so  adroit  in  dealing  with  what  is  inert, 
is  the  clumsiest  of  instruments  for  dealing  with  what  is 
alive  ? 

It  is  one  of  the  most  singular  and  yet  most  familiar 
facts  of  life,  that  when  you  inform  a  man  of  the  law  of 
his  action,  you  make  it  possible  and  indeed  probable 
that  he  will  henceforth  act  on  a  different  law  from  that 
which  you  have  laid  down.  You  tell  me,  for  example, 
that  the  law  of  my  character  is  so-and-so ;  that  my 
past  behaviour  reveals  a  principle  at  work  in  virtue  of 
which  I  fail  to  keep  my  promise  three  times  out  of  a 
hundred.  Confronted  by  this  piece  of  information 
I  am  clearly  in  a  position  different  from  that  which  I 
occupied  prior  to  your  discovery.  So  long  as  I  knew 
nothing  of  the  law  that  was  at  work  within  me,  I  con- 


WS  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

tinued  to  break  my  engagement  three  times  out  of 
a  hundred,  thereby  yielding  confirmation  of  your 
accuracy.  But  now  that  I  know,  the  situation  is 
completely  altered.  1  do  not  like  this  law  ;  and  because 
I  do  not  like  it  I  mean  to  break  it.  Henceforth  1  keep 
the  three  engagements  I  used  to  miss  ;  and  what  now 
becomes  of  the  law?  I  shall  cause  no  trouble  to 
science  so  long  as  you  are  content  with  the  abstract 
statement  that  my  action,  or  my  character,  is  law- 
abiding.  But  make  your  statement  concrete,  give  me 
the  precise  formula  of  my  character,  tell  me  the  specific 
law  of  my  action,  and  I  will  at  once  put  science  to 
confusion  by  adopting  another  formula  and  by  acting 
under  another  law.  So,  then,  if  you  desire  to  maintain 
the  scientific  accuracy  of  your  account  of  my  character, 
if  you  would  point  to  my  actions  as  confirming  the 
specific  laws  under  which  you  say  it  goes  on,  one  thing 
is  essential — you  must  rigorously  conceal  all  this  from 
my  knowledge.  In  my  ignorance  1  shall  continue  to 
play  the  part  of  an  example  illustrating  the  conclusions 
of  your  science.  But  once  reveal  these  conclusions 
to  me,  and  I  shall  at  once  assert  my  right  to  upset  them 
all.  The  very  knowledge  that  I  am  acting  under  such 
and  such  a  principle  is  precisely  what  enables  me  to  act 
under  another  principle,  perhaps  undreamed  of  in  your 
philosophy. 

To  bring  out  this  point  more  clearly,  let  us  suppose 
that  these  inert  masses  whose  behaviour  is  so  amenable 
to  intelligence  were  in  the  same  condition  as  ourselves — 
let  us  suppose,  1  mean,  that  they  were  endowed  with 
reasonable  souls,  that  like  ourselves  they  could  hear 
when  science  speaks,  could  understand  the  laws  of  their 
own  behaviour  when  science  announces  them,  and  were 


IS  THERE   A   SCIENCE   OF  MAN?  209 

able  to  respond  to  these  announcements,  to  criticise 
them,  to  pass  judgment  upon  them,  and  while  remaining 
like  ourselves  essentially  law-governed  things,  were  yet 
capable  as  we  are  of  choosing  the  law  under  which  they 
would  act,  of  changing  the  principle  of  their  past  con- 
duct if  they  did  not  like  it,  and  substituting  another 
principle  at  will.  Is  it  not  obvious  that  science  would 
immediately  come  to  a  standstill,  and  that  prediction 
would  be  impossible  ?  If  we  imagine  the  planets  listen- 
ing to  Kepler  as  he  announces  the  law  of  their  elliptical 
orbits,  and  forthwith  calling  a  meeting  to  consider  the 
situation  and  passing  a  resolution  to  the  effect  that 
ellipses  were  highly  inconvenient  or  inartistic  figures, 
that  the  rate  of  revolution  was  far  too  high  for  safety, 
that  the  position  of  Jupiter  was  too  near  the  sun  for 
economical  efficiency,  that  there  was  gross  inequality 
in  the  distributions  of  solar  heat,  that  Saturn's  endow- 
ment with  rings  was  a  flagrant  example  of  the  unearned 
increment — that,  in  short,  all  these  things  must  be 
reformed — if,  1  say,  we  imagine  such  resolutions  taken 
and  that  power  existed  to  give  them  effect,  is  it  not 
obvious  that  no  science  of  planetary  behaviour  would  be 
even  conceivable  ?  Yet  is  not  this  the  situation  which 
science  has  to  face  in  human  affairs  ?  Let  science,  for 
example,  formulate  the  law  of  the  distribution  of  wealth. 
Would  not  the  mere  announcement  of  this  law  jeopardise 
its  continuance  as  the  working  principle  of  industrial 
society  ?  "  It  is  true,"  Society  would  say,  "  that  this  is 
how  wealth  has  got  itself  distributed  up  to  date  ;  but 
knowing  this  we  are  in  a  position  to  set  on  foot  a  new 
method  of  distribution.  No  doubt  industrial  civilisation 
as   it   has   so  far  developed  is  well  explained  by  the 

principle  announced,  but  anyone  who  assumes  that  the 

14      . 


210  THE  ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

next  phase  will  be  explained  in  the  same  manner  is 
reckoning  without  his  host.  It  is  irrelevant  to  say  that 
things  always  follow  in  a  certain  order ;  that  a  state  of 
society  like  the  present  has  existed  in  past  ages  and  has 
always  been  followed  by  such  and  such  another  state, 
and  that  therefore  this  other  state  will  recur  as  soon  as 
the  present  has  passed  away.  It  is  irrelevant,  because 
the  fixed  order  of  which  you  speak  was  maintained  in 
times  when  men  were  not  only  ignorant  that  it  was 
fixed,  but  didn't  dream  that  there  was  any  order  at  all. 
Thus  nobody  interfered  ;  the  cycle  went  on  repeating 
itself;  the  human  lives  affected  being  like  so  many 
inert  masses  following  the  path  of  their  destiny  as  the 
planets  follow  their  orbits.  But  now  that  these  human 
lives  have  become  through  your  discoveries  aware  of 
the  true  state  of  the  case,  they  are  going  to  stand  it  no 
longer.  That  B  has  followed  A  in  human  affairs  a 
thousand  times  may  be  a  fact;  but  it  has  only  to  be 
stated  and  made  known  to  those  who  previously  knew 
it  not,  and  at  once  the  resolution  is  taken  that  it 
shall  never  occur  again  without  consent." 

Thus  it  is  that  the  discovery  of  tendencies  in  human 
society,  no  matter  how  long  they  have  been  in  existence ; 
the  announcement  of  sequences  in  history,  no  matter 
how  often  repeated;  the  formulation  of  evolutionary 
principles,  no  matter  how  comprehensive  their  sweep, — 
all  this  fixes  nothing,  renders  nothing  inevitable,  affords 
no  certain  clue  to  what  is  coming  next,  imposes  no 
destiny  on  man,  but  leaves  his  future  uncharted  and 
free.  Knowledge  of  the  past,  when  offered  to  a  self- 
conscious  being,  is  indeed  a  challenge  to  construct  the 
future  on  different  lines  ;  it  can  never  yield  the  formula 
which  the  future  is  bound  to  fulfil.     It  is  a  vain  thing, 


IS  THERE   A   SCIENCE   OF  MAN?  211 

therefore,  to  base  predictions  of  what  is  coming  on  the 
knowledge  of  what  has  come.  Nay,  the  prophet  who 
makes  the  attempt  imperils  his  result  by  announcing  it. 
Who,  for  instance,  can  study  the  social  prophecies  of 
Mr  Herbert  Spencer  without  perceiving  that  the  one 
condition  on  which  everything  depends  is  precisely  the 
condition  which  lies  outside  the  formula  of  social  evolu- 
tion? What  if  the  picture  he  offers  of  the  future 
interplay  of  Altruism  and  Egoism  prove  so  little 
attractive  that  men  begin  to  conspire  and  say  to  one 
another,  "  Go  to,  now,  let  us  put  a  spoke  in  this  evolu- 
tionary wheel  and  prevent  the  grinding  out  of  these 
melancholy  results  "  ? 

Perhaps  we  shall  be  told  that  this  is  beyond  our 
powers ;  that  we  cannot  help  ourselves  ;  that  the  fixed 
strategy  of  Nature  must  have  its  way  with  us,  conspire 
against  it  as  we  will.  But  this  surely  is  not  to 
give  us  that  control  of  our  destiny  which  science  has 
promised.  The  promise  was,  that  as  science  applied  to 
Nature  has  enabled  us  to  bind  inanimate  forces  to  our 
will,  to  leash  the  lightning  and  to  harness  the  storm, 
so  science  applied  to  Man  shall  make  us  masters  of 
the  currents  of  history  and  teach  us  to  build  at  pleasure 
the  future  of  mankind.  But  now,  in  the  last  resort, 
you  turn  upon  us  with  some  formula  of  evolution  and 
tell  us  that  the  future  rests  with  this ;  this,  you  say, 
is  the  process  of  your  life,  this  is  the  wheel  on  which 
humanity  is  hung,  and  if  you  resist  its  turning  it  will 
grind  you  to  powder.  Towed  through  Time  in  the 
wake  of  evolution,  held  fast  in  the  grip  of  some  final 
formula  which  he  can  neither  guide  nor  alter  nor 
suspend,  man  is  no  more  master  of  his  life  than  if  he 
lay  at  the  mercy  of  any  brute  force  you  please.     The 


212  THE   ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

process  from  undifferentiated  homogeneity  to  differenti- 
ated heterogeneity,  for  instance,  has  no  blessedness  in 
it  save  what  it  owes  to  the  length  of  the  words ;  and 
I  cannot  see  that  a  race  whose  ultimate  destinies  are 
dependent  on  such  a  process  is  any  better  off  than  if 
it  lay  at  the  mercy  of  wild  forces  or  wild  beasts  with 
less  portentous  names.  Think  of  the  human  race  as  a 
unitary  being  carried  on  the  back  of  the  evolutionary 
process  as  described  by  Spencer  or  any  other  of  its 
devotees ;  then  think  of  a  man  clinging  to  a  log  in  the 
current  of  a  mighty  river  which  is  sweeping  him  onwards 
towards  the  sea,  and  ask  what,  in  principle,  is  the  differ- 
ence between  the  lot  of  that  race  and  the  lot  of  that 
man.  Is  it  not  just  as  idle  to  talk  of  control  in  the 
one  ease  as  in  the  other  ?  No  doubt  the  man  on  the 
log  enjoys  a  certain  liberty.  He  can  paddle  his  feet 
in  the  water  and  find  out  by  observation  and  experi- 
ment which  side  of  the  log  is  most  convenient  for  the 
purpose.  He  can  wriggle  his  body  into  various  atti- 
tudes, of  which  some  are  more  comfortable  than  others. 
He  can  cry  his  woes  to  the  silent  stars  or  he  can  hold 
his  peace.  And  to  what,  save  to  judicious  wrigglings 
such  as  these,  does  the  scientific  control  of  life  amount, 
when  you  set  mankind  drifting  on  the  current  of  the 
world  process  ?  Nay,  if  the  logic  is  thorough,  you  will 
have  to  admit  that  the  very  wrigglings  fall  over  into 
the  fixed  order  of  your  evolutionary  formula,  and  that 
the  victim  can  only  wriggle  as  he  must. 

What,  then,  becomes  of  the  promised  power  over 
his  fate  which  the  growth  of  scientific  knowledge  was 
to  lodge  in  the  hands  of  man  ?  Surely  when  Science 
comes  before  us  with  these  vast  and  comprehensive 
formulae  she  must  do  one  of  two  things :    she  must 


IS  THERE   A   SCIENCE   OF   MAN  ?  213 

either  exhibit  those  formulae  as  sealing  the  doom  and 
confirming  the  ultimate  helplessness  of  humanity,  and 
thereby  wreck  for  ever  that  dream  of  control  with 
which  she  started  on  her  quest ;  or  else  she  must 
concede  to  man  some  power  of  successful  conspiracy 
against  any  strategy  of  Nature  which  she  is  able  to 
define. 

All  philosophies  are  equally  depressing  which  end 
by  representing  Man  as  tied  to  a  system  which  he 
must  perforce  accept.  In  this  respect  I  can  recognise 
no  difference  among  the  various  systems  that  are 
offered.  A  world  whose  final  secret  was  discovered 
and  formulated,  whether  in  the  language  of  British 
science  or  German  metaphysics,  would  be  a  world 
robbed  of  living  interest  for  the  human  will ;  conscious 
life,  subject  in  the  last  resort  to  a  rule  from  which  there 
was  no  escape,  would  be  covered  by  the  categories  which 
govern  the  falling  of  stones  and  the  drifting  of  logs. 
What  difference  does  it  make  whether  the  system  drifts 
us  into  heaven  or  into  hell  ?  If  to  heaven,  let  the 
system  do  its  own  business  and  get  us  there  in  its  own 
time.  We  shall  arrive  no  sooner  by  making  a  fuss. 
If  to  hell,  again  let  the  system  take  its  own  time  ; 
we  can't  postpone  the  inevitable.  In  neither  case  is 
any  higher  wisdom  than  that  of  sitting  still  and  letting 
ourselves  drift.  Nor  is  it  the  doom  under  a  bad  system 
rather  than  under  a  good  one  that  is  terrible  ;  it  is 
the  being  doomed  at  all.  To  have  hesLV en  forced  on 
us  would,  from  the  human  point  of  view,  be  indis- 
tinguishable from  a  sentence  of  universal  perdition. 

The  question  of  an  ultimate  Science  of  Man  is  identical 
in  principle  with  a  problem  which  each  of  us  has  con- 


214  THE   ALCHEMY  OF   THOUGHT 

stantly  to  solve  in  his  daily  life.  In  principle  there  is 
no  difference  between  the  position  of  an  individual  man 
considering  what  he  is  going  to  do  next  in  the  hght  of 
what  he  did  last,  and  a  whole  race  of  men  fashioning 
their  future  upon  scientific  knowledge  of  their  past. 
Suppose,  then,  that  walking  yesterday  on  dangerous 
ground  I  fell  unawares  into  a  pit.  Having  to  take 
the  same  walk  to-day,  I  now  ask  myself,  Shall  I  fall 
into  the  pit  again?  What  we  have  first  to  note  is, 
that  if  I  do  fall  the  second  time,  that  second  fall  will 
be  no  mere  repetition  of  the  first.  It  will  not  be  the 
same  thing  over  again.  To  fall  into  a  pit  of  whose 
existence  you  never  dreamed  is  one  thing ;  to  fall  into 
a  pit  whose  position  you  know  and  into  which  you 
remember  falling  yesterday,  is  another  and  perhaps  a 
much  more  serious  affair.  One  couldn't  do  it  again 
even  if  he  tried.  For  if  to-day  you  fell  into  the  pit 
by  trying  to  fall,  you  would  by  no  means  repeat  what 
you  did  when  yesterday  you  fell  into  it  unawares.  It 
would  be  an  altogether  different  experience.  Knowing 
that  you  have  fallen  once,  no  ingenuity  on  your  part 
will  avail  to  make  the  second  fall  an  exact  reproduction 
of  the  first.  The  nearest  approach  would  be  to  forget 
what  had  already  happened,  according  to  the  principle 
that  the  only  history  which  can  be  repeated  is  the 
history  that  is  forgotten.  But  even  so  you  would  only 
approach  duplication ;  you  would  not  attain  it.  The 
mere  circumstance  that  the  first  fall  occurred  on  Monday 
and  the  next  on  Tuesday  will  make  all  the  difference 
between  the  two,  to  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  the 
second  set  of  bruises  comes  on  the  top  of  the  first. 

A  being  who  remembers  his  past  can  never  repeat 
the   same   action  twice   over;   and   what  is  humanity 


IS  THERE   A   SCIENCE   OF   MAN?  215 

confronted  with  History  except  a  being  who  remembers 
his  past  ?  This  consideration  alone  suffices  to  break 
down  the  analogy  between  the  Science  of  Nature  and 
the  proffered  Science  of  Man ;  and  at  the  same  time 
stamps  as  unpractical  the  entire  view  of  human  life, 
and  the  entire  method  of  dealing  with  human  life,  which 
have  been  founded  on  that  analogy. 

We  have  heard  it  proclaimed  as  a  law  of  history,  for 
example,  that  periods  of  democratic  upheaval  are  in- 
variably followed  by  periods  of  tyrannous  autocracy; 
we  have  been  reminded  of  the  Greek  States  and  the 
Roman  Empire,  and  of  the  rise  of  Napoleon  after  the 
French  Revolution.  Instructed  by  these  instances 
there  are  people  to-day  who  tell  us,  with  some  shaking 
of  the  head,  that  tyranny  is  the  certain  sequel  to  the 
democratic  movement  in  the  modern  world.  And 
there  is  no  denying  that  if  the  modern  world  forgets 
this  history,  then  history  may  repeat  itself  after  a 
fashion ;  but  only  after  a  fashion,  for  the  tyrant  who 
rules  the  modern  world  w^ill  have  to  be  a  different  kind 
of  person  from  the  tyrant  of  old,  or  even  from  Napoleon. 
But  is  the  world  going  to  forget  its  history  ?  And  if 
not,  can  we  treat  the  situation  as  exactly  what  it  was 
when  there  was  no  history  to  remember  ? 

The  same  reflections  should  serve  as  a  warning  to 
all  those  hardy  spirits,  and  they  are  not  a  few,  who 
think  they  can  foresee  what  is  going  to  happen  to 
religion.  Religion  affords  the  most  signal  proof  of 
the  rule  that  history  never  repeats  itself;  and  yet 
religion  is  the  theme  which  tempts  more  prediction 
than  almost  anything  else.  Thus  we  have  recently  had 
from  the  distinguished  ex-President  of  an  American 
University  a  singularly  striking  picture  of  the  Religion 


216  THE   ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

of  the  Future ;  and  the  rehgious  journals  of  the  day 
provide  their  readers  with  much  starthng  information 
on  the  same  subject. 

But  when  the  temptation  comes  over  us  to  announce 
that  a  particular  type  of  religion  is  on  the  way,  ought 
we  not  to  remember  that  while  we  and  our  friends  may 
regard  the  coming  of  this  type  as  good  and  desirable, 
there  are  other  persons,  perhaps  more  powerful  than 
we,  to  whom  it  will  appear  undesirable  and  bad  ?  And 
is  it  irrelevant  to  point  out  that  these  others,  if  they 
take  our  prediction  seriously  (as  the  Pope  and  his 
followers  often  appear  to  do),  will  accept  it  as  a  timely 
warning  and  stir  up  their  energies  to  the  uttermost  to 
thwart  the  expected  arrival?  No  doubt  the  prophets 
will  tell  us  that  the  predicted  religion  will  come  whether 
or  no ;  that  it  has  Power  behind  it  greater  than  that  of 
the  Pope ;  and  that  if  he  or  anybody  else  try  to  arrest 
its  arrival  he  will  fail  and  run  upon  his  own  destruction 
into  the  bargain.  But  is  not  this  a  two-edged  argu- 
ment ?  Might  not  the  Pope  reply  that  a  coming  religion 
which  is  immune  from  the  hindrance  of  the  one  party 
cannot  be  dependent  on  the  help  of  the  other  ;  and  that 
conversely,  if  it  needs  the  support  of  the  Liberals  it  may 
be  destroyed  by  the  hostility  of  the  Conservatives  ? 
The  only  alternative  to  this  is  for  both  parties  to 
regard  the  Religion  of  the  Future  as  being  forced  on 
the  world  ab  extra  and  bound  to  come  all  the  same 
whatever  the  Pope  may  do  to  hinder  or  the  Liberals  to 
help.  But  then  it  is  gravely  open  to  doubt  if  a  religion 
thus  forced  on  by  the  course  of  evolution,  or  by  super- 
natural agency,  and  bound  to  come  whether  or  no, 
would  be  one  which  anybody  could  regard  as  a  good 
religion.     A  good  religion  is  one  which  man  attains,  at 


IS  THERE   A   SCIENCE   OF  MAN  ?  217 

great  peril  and  against  mighty  odds,  by  the  travail  of 
his  spirit  and  the  faithfulness  of  his  will ;  not  one  which 
insists  on  coming  whatever  man  may  do  or  forbear. 
The  only  safe  assumption  seems  to  be  that  unless  all 
parties,  Conservatives  as  well  as  Liberals,  exert  them- 
selves to  the  uttermost,  the  future  may  have  no  religion 
at  all.  But  what  the  religion  of  the  future  will  be  when 
it  comes  is  precisely  what  no  man  knoweth  nor  can 
know. 

Are  we  to  conclude,  then,  that  the  intelligence  is  an 
utterly  useless  faculty  when  applied  to  human  affairs, 
and  that,  no  Science  of  Man  being  possible,  ignorance 
is  as  good  as  knowledge,  the  barbarian  as  wise  as  the 
philosopher,  and  the  Dark  Ages  as  well  off  as  any 
other  ? 

To  this  we  reply  that  whether  the  intelligence  is 
useless  or  not  depends  on  the  purpose  for  which  it  is 
used.  It  is  useless  if  you  ask  it  to  reveal  to  you  the 
coming  developments  of  the  world  or  the  future  course 
of  your  own  life.  It  is  useless  if  you  ask  it  to*  do  for 
human  affairs,  or  for  your  own  life,  what  it  does  in 
regard  to  Halley's  comet,  viz.  provide  you  with  a 
chart  of  your  own  behaviour  and  tell  you  where  you 
or  the  world  will  be  at  a  given  date.  It  is  useless 
if  you  want  a  fixed  pattern  of  the  world's  evolu- 
tion, or  a  fixed  code  of  human  conduct,  or  a  fixed 
form  which  your  own  life  is  bound  to  assume.  In 
short,  the  intelligence  is  useless  if  you  ask  it  to  do  in 
the  field  of  human  life  what  it  does  with  success  in 
the  field  of  inanimate  Nature.  Whatever  the  intelli- 
gence fixes  in  this  way,  even  though  it  be  a  scheme  of 
world-evolution  like  that  proposed  by  Spencer,  or  the 


218  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

form  of  the  coming  religion  as  foreseen  by  the  American 
thinker,  is  Hable  to  be  instantly  made  fluid  and  undone 
when  it  comes  into  contact  with  the  human  will. 
There  is  no  historical  method  of  living ;  for  life  is  not 
the  repetition  of  a  past  but  the  endless  creation  of  a 
future.  The  intelligence,  therefore,  is  always  too  late 
for  self-conscious  life  ;  for  all  it  can  do  is  to  record  and 
systematise  what  has  been  up  to  date,  in  order  to  provide 
the  will  with  a  point  of  departure,  a  terminus  a  quo  from 
which  to  embark  on  some  fresh  venture  of  the  spirit. 

But  what  a  service  that  is,  if  only  we  would  take  it 
aright !  Historical  science  is  the  knowledge  of  how 
the  world  spent  yesterday, — a  yesterday  which  may 
have  lasted  a  thousand  years.  And  it  is  just  that 
knowledge  which  puts  humanity  in  position  to  spend 
to-day  otherwise.  The  knowledge  of  his  past  is  the  raw 
material  which  man,  the  artist,  weaves  into  fresh  patterns 
hour  by  hour.  Keep  him  ignorant  and  he  has  no  material 
to  work  on  and  cannot  live.  Did  he  fall  into  the  pit 
yesterday?  Let  the  fact  be  recorded  and  to-day  he 
may  do  something  else,  but  what  else  no  science  can 
tell.  Let  the  fact  be  forgotten,  and  he  will  fall  into 
the  pit  again ;  he  will  not  live  as  a  self-conscious  being 
at  all,  but  simply  roll  and  tumble  about  and  go  on 
repeating  what  the  law  of  his  rollings  and  tumblings 
requires,  like  any  helpless  stone.  The  future  is  always 
the  free  reconstruction  of  the  past,  not  the  imitation  or 
there  petition  of  it ;  and  without  knowledge  of  the  past 
man  has  nothing  to  reconstruct,  and  the  work  of  the 
spirit  cannot  go  on.  Such  is  the  inestimable  service  of 
the  historical  method — the  method  of  the  intelligence. 
Where  that  method  has  overreached  itself  has  been  in 
supposing  that  the  study  of  the  past  can  teach  us  any 


IS  THERE   A  SCIENCE   OF  MAN?  219 

one  fixed  and  final  principle,  according  to  which  man, 
whether  he  likes  it  or  not,  must  submit  the  free  creative 
genius  of  his  spirit  in  its  endless  work  of  transforming 
and  re-fashioning  the  raw  material  of  his  life.  Even 
though  it  take  the  comprehensive  form  of  Hegelian 
Dialectics,  such  a  fixed  and  final  principle  instantly 
turns  fluid  when  brought  into  contact  with  the  living 
will ;  the  will  rejects  it  in  the  final  form  and  insists 
on  re-creating  it  after  a  new  fashion  of  its  own.  For 
this  reason  it  is  certain  that  the  suffrages  of  humanity- 
will  always  be  given  in  the  long-run  to  the  cause  of 
freedom ;  not  because  necessity  is  illogical,  but  because 
it  has  no  application  to  Life.  The  mistake  made  by 
many  of  the  advocates  of  freedom  is  that  they  reduce 
it  to  a  fixed  formula :  for  example,  the  formula  of  choice 
between  two  alternatives.  The  free  spirit  overflows 
that  formula,  just  as  it  overflows  every  other.  A 
formulated  freedom  is  nothing  but  necessity  under  a 
new  name. 

A  teacher  who  would  unify  all  knowledge  into  a 
hard  and  fast  system  of  truth,  a  philosopher  who 
invents  a  system  into  which  all  our  experience  viust 
go,  a  moralist  who  constructs  a  mould  for  the  human 
will — any  one,  in  fact,  be  he  scientific  man  or  meta- 
physician— who  shackles  conscious  life  with  formulae,  is 
a  dogmatist,  and  is  merely  trying  to  do  on  other  fields 
what  the  Pope  of  Rome  does  in  his  more  restricted 
department.  To  escape  from  the  bondage  imposed  by 
the  formulas  of  creeds  and  to  accept  in  place  the 
formulas  of  Evolution  or  Psychology,  Ethics  or  Meta- 
physics, is  to  exchange  whips  for  scorpions.  Indeed 
no  form  of  spiritual  tyranny  is  quite  so  obnoxious,  so 
completely  deadening  and  deadly,  as  that  proposed  by 


220  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

a  cut-and-dried  Science  of  Man.  It  has  not  even  the 
merit  of  being  picturesque.  The  tyrant  whom  we  now 
serve  is  no  longer  a  being  of  flesh  and  blood,  but  a 
spectral  abstraction,  cold  and  pale  as  a  sheeted  ghost. 
It  cannot  produce  so  much  as  a  mythology.  And 
that  alone  puts  it  under  suspicion.  For  though 
mythologies  are  not  "  true,"  yet  nothing  that  is  "  true  " 
ever  fails  to  produce  a  mythology. 

What,  now,  is  the  bearing  of  all  this  on  Religion  ? 
Does  the  view  that  Life  overflows  all  formulae,  breaks 
through  all  theory,  goes  beyond  all  knowledge,  render 
the  task  of  the  religious  teacher  more  hopeful  or  the 
reverse  ? 

Let  us  ask  ourselves  a  parallel  question.  How  would 
the  prospects  of  Art  be  affected  if  someone  were  to  dis- 
cover a  fixed  formula  of  Art,  by  the  application  of  which 
anyone  could  produce  works  of  Art  at  will  ?  What 
would  the  artist  say  if  some  prophet  were  to  promise 
that  in  a  future  state  of  the  world  this  formula  would 
be  as  familiar  to  every  man  as  A,  B,  C  ;  that  in  those 
halcyon  days  there  will  be  no  more  inartistic  people, 
no  more  incompetent  artists,  no  more  bad  pictures  in 
the  Academy  ?  What  if  some  aesthetic  counterpart  of 
Mr  Herbert  Spencer  should  show  the  world,  by  means 
of  a  synthetic  principle,  a  picture  of  the  millennium  of 
Art  when  all  difficulties  will  have  been  overcome  and 
the  pressure  of  a  button  will  produce  an  Elgin  Theseus 
or  a  Sistine  Madonna  ? 

Would  not  every  artist  turn  away  from  this  folly, 
and  tell  us  that  what  we  are  describing  is  not  the 
millennium  of  Art  but  the  total  disappearance  of  Art 
from  the  world  ;  that  whatever  is  produced  by  obedience 


IS   THERE   A   SCIENCE   OF   MAN?  221 

to  rules  imposed  from  without  lacks  everything  that  Art 
demands  ;  that  Art  lives  in  a  free  creativeness,  which 
ever  makes  new  rules  for  itself,  and  rejects  every 
formula  which  defines  its  business,  or  shackles  its  free 
movement  towards  a  freely  chosen  end  ?  Is  not  all  this 
a  commonplace  ? 

How  much  more  ought  it  to  be  a  commonplace  in 
regard  to  religion  !  It  is  as  impossible  to  graft  religion 
on  to  any  cut-and-dried  theory  of  life  as  it  would  be 
to  produce  Art  from  any  cut-and-dried  theory  of 
painting  and  sculpture.  Indeed  one  may  go  further 
and  say — what  every  artist  knows  in  his  own  sphere — 
that  if  any  cut-and-dried  theory  of  life  were  possible, 
religion  would  be  impossible. 

The  greatest  dangers  to  religion  have  arisen  from 
blindness  to  this  view  of  the  case.  Religious  men  have 
been  too  ready  to  take  over  one  or  other  world-formula 
and  attempt  to  give  it  a  religious  character  by  grafting 
on  to  it  the  idea  of  Personality.  God,  under  these 
conditions,  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  Impersona- 
tion of  the  world-formula,  the  eternal  Embodiment 
of  the  abstract  Law  of  Life.  This  is  probably  the  least 
attractive  form  in  which  religion  has  been  presented 
to  the  mind  of  man.  The  personation  of  the  world- 
formula  is  a  mere  piece  of  bad  mythology,  which  the 
formula  itself  does  not  require  and  will  not  sustain. 
The  statement  so  often  made  in  works  of  religious 
metaphysics  that  God  is  eternally  what  He  means  to 
be  and  eternally  means  to  be  what  He  is,  is  not  only 
infinitely  perplexing  on  the  face  of  it,  but  when 
understood  is  precisely  the  sort  of  thing  one  would 
wish  were  not  true.  Candidly  regarded,  it  is  merely 
an  effort  to  disguise  the  unpleasant  fact  that  the  person 


222  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

here  called  God  is  nothing  but  the  abstract  world- 
formula  endowed  with  a  proper  name.  But  the 
christening  makes  no  difference. 

When  the  science  of  life  puts  forth  these  claims 
we  must  remember  that  in  everything  that  comes 
before  us  we  have  an  interest  which  goes  far  beyond 
our  interest  in  it  as  a  mere  object  of  knowledge. 
Everything  loved,  admired,  valued  by  man  is  both  a 
known  and  an  unknown,  and  the  value  of  the  thing 
to  him  is  never  exhausted  by  what  he  knows  about 
its  nature,  its  origin,  or  the  laws  of  its  behaviour. 
We  know  something  about  the  sunset;  but  what  we 
know  about  it  is  not  what  we  most  admire,  not  what 
makes  us  glad  that  the  sunset  is  there.  Are  we  to 
ignore  its  beauty  on  the  ground  that  we  cannot 
translate  this  into  terms  of  knowledge?  We  know 
something  about  the  people  we  love  ;  we  could  write 
chapters  of  their  physiology ;  we  could  draw  their 
portraits  perhaps ;  but  neither  the  physiology,  nor  the 
portrait,  nor  any  number  of  such  things  gives  the 
reason  why  we  love  them.  Shall  we  limit  our  interest 
in  these  people  to  what  we  know  about  them  ?  If 
we  did  we  should  surely  cease  to  love  them.  Is  it 
not  true  that  the  life  that  lures  us  on  is  a  life  whose 
issues  we  cannot  forecast;  and  if  we  could  forecast 
them  would  it  lure  us  any  more?  The  world  whose 
presence  we  welcome,  the  universe  in  which  we  rejoice, 
is  it  the  world  as  defined  in  any  formula  or  reproduced 
in  any  system  ?  Nay,  rather,  the  Nature  we  love  is  the 
Nature  that  runs  wild,  and  the  life  that  we  seek  is  one 
on  which  the  shackles  of  no  system  have  ever  fallen. 
To  bid  us  Uve  exclusively  on  the  basis  of  formulated 
knowledge  is  to  ask  a  self-contradictory  thing,  for  life, 


IS  THERE   A   SCIENCE   OF  MAN?  223 

and  love  too,  is  just  an  out-going  beyond  the  formulated 
into  the  ever-open  hinterland  of  the  spirit.  There  at 
all  events  there  is  room  for  religion.  "  La  science  a 
trait  aux  choses  sans  lesquelles  Fhomme  ne  peut  pas 
vivre ;  la  religion  a  celles  sans  lesquelles  il  ne  veut  pas 
vivre."  ^ 

1  M.  Emile  Boutroux — Introduction  to   the  English  translation  of 
Science  et  Religion. 


X.— THE  MANIPULATION  OF  MAN 


To  the  question,  "  Is  a  Science  of  Man  possible  ? "  we 
have  offered  a  negative  answer.  In  so  answering  we 
have  had  in  view  throughout  the  essential  feature  of 
human  life,  viz.  the  conscious  will.  Self-consciousness, 
which  is  another  name  for  the  conscious  will,  escapes 
from  all  formulae,  and  overflows  all  definitions.  Hence 
it  is  that  science,  which  bridles  facts  with  formulae 
and  circumscribes  them  with  definitions,  can  never 
capture  the  essential  fact  of  life ;  and  a  science  of  life 
on  those  terms  is  impossible.  If  we  were  at  liberty 
to  omit  from  our  notion  of  Man  this  essential  truth 
of  his  conscious  will,  no  doubt  we  could  construct 
human  science  of  many  varieties.  And  "human 
science  "  of  that  kind  does  exist ;  and  not  only  exists, 
but  grows  apace  and  does  its  work.  Individuals  con- 
sidered as  objects  in  time  and  space  provide  the  subject 
matter  of  Physiology  and  its  cognates.  Communities 
considered  as  organisms  that  grow  upon  the  surface  of 
the  planet,  or  as  masses  that  execute  mechanical  move- 
ments and  impinge  one  upon  another,  give  rise  in 
their  turn  to  the  science  of  History  and  to  Sociology. 
Then  there  is  Psychology,  both  individual  and  social ; 
a  science  of  which  we  may  say  that  the  weight  of  its 
claims  bears  an  inverse  proportion  to   the   solidity   of 

224 


THE   MANIPULATION   OF   MAN  225 

its  foundations.  For  Psychology  claims  to  be,  pre- 
eminently, the  Science  of  Man  —  undeterred  by  the 
existence  of  a  grave  doubt  as  to  whether  it  is  a  science 
at  all. 

Leaving  self-consciousness,  or  the  conscious  v^ill,  out 
of  account,  we  may  then  construct  an  indefinite  num- 
ber of  such  "  human "  sciences,  and  we  may  combine 
them  all  under  the  general  name  of  Anthropology. 
But  when  the  conscious  will  is  reintroduced  it  will  be 
seen  that  there  is  one  human  fact  which  our  Anthro- 
pology does  not  cover,  namely,  the  Anthropos  himself. 
Whatever  belongs  to  our  Anthropos  as  an  object  moved 
by  external  forces  will  fall  within  the  scope  of  the 
science  and  be  explained  by  its  methods ;  but  all  that 
belongs  to  him  as  a  law  and  end  unto  himself,  as  a  self- 
conscious  personality,  will  fall  outside ;  and,  what  is  far 
more  important,  will  take  up  a  critical  and,  if  hard 
pressed,  a  defiant  attitude  towards  that  part  which 
falls  inside  the  area  of  proof.  Whenever  a  Science  of 
Man  is  propounded  we  see  this  strange  spectacle :  Man 
standing  opposite  that  scheme  of  his  life  which  science 
has  drawn,  stroking  his  chin,  as  it  were,  in  an  attitude 
of  contemplation,  and  deliberating  with  himself  as  to 
whether  he  will  or  will  not  allow  the  picture  to  be 
realised  henceforth  as  a  concrete  fact.  There  is 
nothing  like  this  in  the  natural  sciences.  The  inert 
masses  of  Nature  may  be  considered  as  submitting 
without  protest  to  whatever  the  human  intellect  pro- 
pounds as  holding  true  of  them  ;  they  have,  of  course, 
no  power  to  protest  or  even  to  criticise.  But  no  sooner 
does  "  human  "  science  issue  its  pronouncements  than 
Man,  who  is  the  subject-matter  of  its  formulae,  raises 

the  question,  "  Shall  we  suffer  these  pronouncements  to 

15 


226  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

continue  in  force  ?  Shall  we  suffer  the  facts,  the  laws, 
the  percentages  to  remain  as  they  are  ;  or  shall  we  take 
measures  for  introducing  another  set  of  facts,  another 
set  of  laws,  another  set  of  percentages  ? "  Thus  a 
complete  Anthropology,  if  we  may  imagine  such  a 
thing,  would  do  no  more  than  provide  Man  with 
a  fresh  point  of  departure.  Published  to-day  it  would 
require  re- writing  to-morrow. 

No  doubt  we  shall  be  told  that  in  all  this  we  are 
confusing  what  philosophers  have  been  pleased  to 
distinguish  as  the  that  and  the  what.  It  will  be  said 
that  while  the  particular  truths  of  Anthropology  are 
always  subject  to  the  criticism  of  Reason,  yet  the 
principles  of  this  criticism  are  eternal.  But  those  who 
use  this  argument  ought  in  all  fairness  to  make  it  good 
by  telling  us  explicitly  what  the  "eternal  principles" 
are.  To  say  merely  that  there  are  eternal  principles 
either  evades  the  issue  or  begs  the  question.  What  are 
they  ?  That  "  duty  must  be  done  "  ;  that  "  the  interests 
of  the  part  are  subject  to  the  interests  of  the  whole  "  ; 
that  "  there  is  an  infinite  difference  between  right  and 
wrong."  These  are  all  true  beyond  cavil;  they  are 
indeed  deliberately  constructed  in  such  a  form  that  no 
reasonable  being  could  deny  them ;  but  what  do  they 
all  amount  to  beyond  a  restatement  of  the  fact  that 
Man  is  a  self-conscious  being  ?  "  To  be  self-conscious  " 
is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  we  have  a  duty  to 
do ;  that  our  life  has  meaning  as  "  a  whole  " ;  that  the 
difference  between  the  interests  of  life  as  a  whole  and 
the  interest  of  any  single  moment  is  "  infinite."  Unless 
Philosophy  can  get  further  than  this  and  tell  us  precisely 
what  our  duty  is,  the  mere  proclamation  of  an  abstract 
duty  announces  nothing  that  any  self-conscious  being 


THE   MANIPULATION   OF   MAN  227 

could  possibly  overlook.  As  to  the  confusion  of  the 
that  and  the  what  we  gladly  admit  the  charge.  But  we 
do  so  on  this  ground — that  self-conscious  life  is  itself 
the  confusing,  or  rather — for  the  change  of  term  is 
important — the  fusing  of  the  that  and  the  what.  Any 
scheme  of  thought  which  separates  the  two  becomes  by 
that  separation  inapplicable  to  Man. 

Of  all  the  sciences  it  is  perhaps  Psychology  which 
is  most  apt  to  provoke  the  critical  attitude,  with 
its  attendant  readjustment  of  the  situation.  Take,  for 
example,  the  Psychology  of  Desire.  Turning  to  an 
accredited  authority,  I  find  the  law  laid  down  that 
"  all  men  desire  happiness."  Now,  let  us  consider 
the  result  of  accepting  this  proposition  as  true. 
Plainly,  the  discovery  creates  a  new  situation.  Prior 
to  its  announcement  we  knew  not  what  we  were 
doing;  from  generation  to  generation  the  desire  for 
happiness  held  us  in  its  grip ;  and  the  times  of  that 
ignorance  God  winked  at.  But  no  sooner  has  Psy- 
chology enlightened  us  than  reflection  and  criticism 
begin.  Admitting  that  we  have  always  desired  happi- 
ness up  to  date,  and  even  now  desire  nothing  else,  we 
begin  to  ask  ourselves  whether  this  universal  desire  for 
happiness  is  not,  after  all,  a  foolish  desire,  and  one  we 
should  do  well  to  discard,  or  to  vary,  as  soon  as  possible. 
For  our  part,  we  think  we  should,  and  we  mean  to  try. 
Assuming  that  we  succeed  in  this  attempt  (and  only 
dogmatism  can  assume  that  we  shall  fail),  the  law  that 
*'  all  men  desire  happiness  "  will  no  longer  hold  good. 

The  same  result  may  be  evoked  by  the  more 
ambitious  statements  of  Social  Psychology.  "  Crowds  " 
are  said  to  be  actuated  by  such  and  such  impulses ;  and 


228  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

the  statesman  is  informed  that  he  may  count  on  the 
uniform  recurrence  of  this  or  that  impulse  under  given 
conditions.  What  is  here  overlooked  is  that  the 
"  crowd  "  as  well  as  the  statesman  can  read  and  think 
and  make  use  of  the  information  concerning  its  own 
behaviour  thus  provided  by  the  Social  Psychologist. 
Indeed,  as  things  are  in  the  world  of  to-day,  it  is 
probable  that  the  "  crowd  '*  will  be  the  first  to  profit  by 
the  Psychologist's  discussion,  thanks  to  which  it  may 
learn  to  discard  the  impulses  under  which  it  is  said  to 
"  act,"  and  replace  them  with  others ;  so  that  when 
it  comes  to  business  we  may  see — and  indeed  we  often 
do  see — the  curious  spectacle  of  the  "  crowd  "  handling 
the  statesman  instead  of  the  statesman  handling  the 
**  crowd." 

For  these  reasons,  which  might  be  multiplied  inde- 
finitely, we  conclude  that  a  rigid  Science  of  Man  is 
possible  only  on  condition  that  we  artificially  abstract 
from  our  conception  of  Man  the  circumstance  that  he 
is  a  self-conscious  being,  or  the  possessor  of  a  conscious 
will.  But  when  this  feature  is  abstracted  we  cannot 
persuade  ourselves  that  what  remains  is  worthy  of  the 
designation  "  Man,"  nor  that  the  science  which  treats 
of  such  an  eviscerated  being  can  properly  receive  the 
qualification  of  "human." 

We  cannot  conceal  from  ourselves,  however,  that  in 
putting  forward  this  negative  answer  we  shall  have  to 
encounter  a  most  formidable  prejudice ;  a  prejudice 
deeply  rooted  in  the  soil  of  our  intellectual  history 
and  nourished  by  the  whole  atmosphere  of  modern  life. 
It  may  even  appear  to  some  persons  that  by  denying 
human  science  we  degrade  the  conception  of  Man. 
For  it  is  almost  an  axiom  of  the  modern  world  that 


THE   MANIPULATION   OF   MAN  229 

things  of  which  no  science  exists  are  things  that  are 
not  worth  considering ;  whence  it  would  follow  that  in 
representing  Man  as  insusceptible  of  scientific  handling 
we  make  him  contemptible,  or,  at  all  events,  of  no 
account. 

And  it  must  be  confessed  that  from  a  certain  point 
of  view  this  objection  is  serious.  We  admit  its  fatality 
to  an  entire  class  of  ambitious  designs.  It  is  certain 
that  if  we  want  to  turn  electricity  to  the  best  account 
we  must  have  a  science  of  electricity  as  the  basis  of 
our  operations  ;  that  to  make  poultry  pay  we  must 
handle  them  scientifically ;  that  to  get  the  best  results 
out  of  an  acre  of  wheat,  or  a  stud  of  horses,  or  a  herd 
of  shorthorn  bullocks,  we  must  rely  on  science  and  call 
science  to  our  aid  at  every  turn.  It  is  certain  that 
the  Germans  will  oust  us  out  of  the  market  if  their 
commerce  is  scientific  and  ours  is  not ;  it  is  certain  that 
our  ships  will  sink  if  we  build  them  on  the  assump- 
tion that  there  is  no  science  of  naval  construction. 
Deny  science  in  any  one  of  these  or  such-like  situations, 
and  the  result  is  that  we  shall  neither  make  money 
nor  win  victories,  nor  attain  any  purpose  we  may  have 
in  hand.  And  the  same  holds  good  in  regard  to  Man. 
If  there  is  no  Science  of  Man  it  is  certain  that  we 
can  make  no  use  of  him,  or  at  all  events  very  little. 
In  plain  words,  we  can't  make  him  pay.  A  Science 
of  Man  we  must  have  before  we  can  bend  him  or 
compel  him  to  serve  any  purpose  of  our  own.  Nor 
does  the  nature  of  that  purpose  make  any  difference. 
You  cannot  say,  "  Science  comes  in  when  Man  is 
exploited  for  his  harm,  but  not  when  exploited  for  his 
good."  Without  science  you  cannot  exploit  him  at 
all.     It  makes  no  difference  whether  your  object  be  to 


280  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

harness  him  in  chains  to  your  waggons,  or  to  trans- 
form him  into  a  seraph.  Nay,  for  transforming  him  into 
a  seraph  science  is  even  more  necessary  than  it  is  for 
harnessing  him  to  a  waggon.  Suppose,  for  example,  that 
our  purpose  be  to  compel  all  men  to  develop  as  rapidly 
as  possible  into  the  sort  of  being  with  whom  Mr  Spencer 
peoples  his  millennium.  Without  a  Science  of  Man  we 
cannot  take  even  the  first  steps  towards  the  accomplish- 
ment of  that  benevolent  design.  Or  suppose  we  lay 
our  plans  for  guiding  the  race  into  Mr  Bellamy's  Utopia. 
The  Science  of  Man  must  be  our  starting-point.  Once 
take  the  position  that  men  are  to  be  put  to  uses  of 
our  designing  or  desiring;  that  their  destinies  are  to 
be  controlled  by  a  purpose  which  emanates  from  our 
avarice  or  from  our  benevolence  ;  that  we,  and  not 
themselves,  are  the  arbitrators  of  what  is  good  for  them  ; 
that  the  end  they  exist  to  serve  is  of  our  assigning  and 
not  their  choosing — assume  any  of  these  things,  and  all 
our  well-meant  schemes  fall  like  card-houses  before  the 
announcement,  "There  is  no  Science  of  Man." 

The  case  may  be  presented  in  another  form.  liCt  us 
imagine  the  human  race  divided  by  a  hard-and-fast 
line  into  two  classes  in  any  of  the  following  ways : — 
(1)  Men  and  Employers  -  of  -  men  ;  (2)  Crowds  and 
Managers-of-crowds  ;  (3)  People-to- whom-good-is-done 
and  People  -  who  -  do  -  them  -good  ;  (4)  Brothers  and 
Brothers'-keepers ;  (5)  Governors  and  Governed ;  (6) 
We  and  They. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  division  is  between 
those  who  take  the  part  of  active  agents  and  those 
who  submit  to  the  arrangements  which  those  agents 
ordain — in  a  word,  between  those  who  operate  and 
those  who  are  operated   upon.     Now,  it  is  implied  in 


THE   MANIPULATION   OF  MAN  231 

such  a  classification  that  the  operators  are  equipped  for 
their  business  by  an  appropriate  Science  of  Man.  In 
each  case  the  position  is  that  the  active  party  are  en- 
gaged in  moulding  a  certain  raw  material,  namely,  the 
passive  party,  into  a  shape  which  rests  with  the  moulders, 
and  not  with  the  moulded,  to  determine.  And  to 
attempt  this  without  scientific  knowledge  of  the  raw 
material  to  be  handled  would  be  to  invite  failure,  or,  at 
all  events,  imperfect  success.  To  employ  men  for  a 
purpose  which  is  yours  and  not  theirs  is  as  impossible 
under  those  conditions  as  it  would  be  to  employ  steam, 
electricity,  or  petrol-gas  in  a  like  ignorance.  To  manage 
"  crowds "  or  "  masses "  implies  that  the  managers 
understand  their  material  and  can  predict  its  response 
to  various  modes  of  treatment,  in  the  same  sense 
that  the  manager  of  a  powder  factory  understands 
the  behaviour  of  high  explosives  when  struck  with  a 
hammer  or  brought  into  contact  with  a  lighted  match, 
or  ignited  by  percussion  in  the  barrel  of  a  rifle  or  a 
great  gun.  To  "keep"  one's  brother,  again,  involves 
a  power  of  expert  control  greater  than  would  be 
required  to  "  keep  "  horses  or  poultry  or  bees  or  tame 
leopards  or  a  whole  menagerie  of  wild  beasts  ;  so  that 
it  becomes  impossible  even  to  imagine  how  the  enter- 
prise of  "  keeping "  men  could  go  on  for  a  single 
hour  in  the  absence  of  a  firm  scientific  foundation. 

Now,  it  is  a  fact  that  we  do  draw  the  above  hard-and- 
fast  definitions,  that  we  do  habitually  class  mankind  in 
some  one,  or  perhaps  in  all,  of  these  ways ;  and  there  is 
not  a  doubt  that  the  whole  body  of  mental  habits  and 
instincts  which  prompts  that  classification,  and  the  vast 
array  of  interests  involved  in  maintaining  it,  will  rise  up 
with  one  consent  to  protest  against  the  announcement 


THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

that  there  is  no  Science  of  Man.  The  managers-of- 
crowds,  the  manipulators  of  the  "  masses,"  the  section 
who  do  good,  the  professional  keepers  of  their  brethren, 
the  employers-of-men,  the  governors  of  the  governed, — 
all,  in  fact,  who  take  the  active  part  in  the  business  of 
Man-handling,  will  feel  that  their  interests,  their  occu- 
pations, nay,  their  whole  view  of  life,  are  really  bound 
up  with  that  Science  of  Man  whose  existence  is  here 
denied. 

How  the  other,  the  passive,  party  will  greet  the 
denial  need  not  concern  us.  It  need  not  concern  us, 
because  for  all  practical  purposes  the  passive  party  does 
not  exist.  I  mean  that  if  a  census  were  taken  of  the 
human  race,  the  number  of  persons  who  would  enrol 
themselves  as  belonging  to  the  purely  passive  side  of 
the  division  would  be  so  small,  and  the  number  who 
would  enrol  themselves  on  the  active  side  would  be  so 
overwhelmingly  large,  that  the  question  of  what  the 
former  may  think  of  our  problem  would  not  even  arise. 
Indeed,  were  a  census  of  this  kind  to  be  taken  we  should 
be  confronted  with  a  far  more  serious  difficulty  than 
that  of  ascertaining  what  the  "crowd,"  or  any  other 
passive  party,  thinks  about  the  Science  of  Man.  Our 
difficulty  would  be  to  find  the  "  crowd.''  No  doubt 
from  our  own  point  of  view  the  "  crowd "  is  easily 
found ;  for  it  consists  of  everybody  save  ourselves. 
But  that  is  not  the  way  the  crowd  has  of  regarding  the 
matter.  Were  we  to  adopt  the  fairer  plan  of  con- 
sulting everybody  else,  the  "  crowd  "  would  melt  away 
before  our  eyes  more  rapidly  than  if  charged  by  a 
regiment  of  armed  dragoons,  and  we  should  be  left  in 
the  unfortunate  position  of  having  no  "  crowd  "  to  study 
and  no  raw  material  to  which  the  teachings  of  crowd- 


THE   MANIPULATION   OF   MAN  233 

science  might  be  applied.  In  the  long-run,  therefore, 
we  should  find  that  the  whole  of  mankind,  saving  only 
a  remnant  of  the  lame,  the  halt,  and  the  blind,  would 
enrol  themselves  on  the  side  whose  interests  are  menaced 
by  our  denial  of  the  Science  of  Man,  and  present  an 
overwhelming  confederacy  of  opposition  before  which 
our  humble  plea  would  scarcely  have  a  chance  of  making 
itself  heard. 

But  there  are  still  to  be  found  in  Israel  some  who 
have  not  bowed  their  knees  to  the  Baal  of  the  ab- 
stract They.  To  them  it  seems  that  any  individual, 
or  group  of  individuals,  who  treats  his  fellow  men  as 
raw  material  to  be  forced  into  the  mould  of  his  own 
ideals,  who  tries  to  harness  them  to  the  yoke  of  his 
own  purpose,  who  would  impose  his  will  on  them,  as 
though  they  had  no  wills  of  their  own,  who  would 
use  them  or  "  make  them  pay "  in  the  interest  of  any 
scheme  which  his  greed  or  his  benevolence  has  fathered, 
is  not  only  undertaking  an  inherently  impossible  task, 
but  is  committing  the  unforgivable  sin  against  the 
Holy  Ghost.  The  spirit  of  Machiavelli  or  Lord  Chester- 
field reincarnated  in  the  Professor  of  some  "Human" 
Science,  has  not  changed  its  essential  nature,  and  pre- 
sents no  greater  attraction  under  the  new  form  than 
under  the  old.  And  the  Pontiffs  of  Evolution,  who 
pretend  acquaintance  with  the  fixed  Strategy  of  the 
Universe,  and  command  mankind  to  serve  this  Strategy 
or  die,  are  not  one  whit  more  terrible,  nor  more  likely 
to  be  obeyed,  than  any  Pope  who  threatens  us  with 
destruction  for  refusing  to  believe  in  the  Virgin  Birth. 
Against  such  attempts  to  put  men,  considered  as  a 
mere  "  they,"  under  bondage  to  what  "  we  "  think  good 
or  true,  there  rises  up  an  inexpugnable  opposition  from 


234  THE  ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

the  very  principle  of  self-conscious  life;  and  it  is  to 
this  that  we  look  for  support  in  our  denial  that  there 
is  a  Science  of  Man.  We  are  confident  that  its 
disappearance  will  leave  no  sense  of  loss  in  any 
thoughtful  mind  which  has  learnt  the  lesson  taught 
long  ago,  that  Man  is  an  end  unto  himself. 

That  Man  is  an  instrument  to  be  employed  by  Man ; 
that  he  is  a  thing  to  be  made  use  of,  exploited,  turned 
to  account,  reformed,  developed,  compelled  to  serve  a 
purpose,  by  beings  who  call  themselves  "  we " ;  that 
"  we "  can  raise  him  as  though  he  were  a  bullock ; 
that  "  we  "  can  improve  him  as  though  he  were  a  cart- 
horse ;  that  "  we  "  can  breed  him  on  Mendelian  or  other 
principles  as  though  he  were  a  Cochin- China  fowl ;  that 
"  we  "  can  dictate  his  habits  as  though  he  were  a  hedge 
to  be  trimmed  or  a  torrent  to  be  confined — this,  we 
repeat,  is  our  deep-seated  illusion.  Remembering  the 
conscious  will  in  ourselves  and  forgetting  it  in  our 
neighbour,  we  forthwith  provide  for  his  needs  on  the 
assumption  that  what  **we"  think  good  for  him  is 
what  he  will  think  good  for  himself,  that  when  "  we  " 
have  proved  his  interest  to  be  so-and-so,  he  will  forth- 
with accept  our  demonstration  and  act  accordingly. 
And  we  defend  this  attitude  by  saying  that  inasmuch 
as  the  demonstration  is  "scientific"  our  neighbour 
must  agree  with  us  or  forfeit  his  claim  to  be  a  rational 
being.  But  all  this  begs  the  question  by  assuming 
that  the  "  must-be's  "  of  science  which  are  incontestable 
when  applied  to  inanimate  forces  are  equally  valid 
when  offered  to  human  wills.  Our  neighbour  is  not 
bound  to  accept  our  standards  of  rationality  in  judging 
of  what  is  best  for  himself.  Were  "  we  "  the  possessors 
of  some  despotic  power,  which  left  him  with  no  will 


THE   MANIPULATION   OF  MAN  235 

of  his  own,  we  might  perhaps  (if  sure  of  ourselves) 
enforce  our  science  at  every  point,  just  as  we  should 
if  we  were  dealing  with  a  flock  of  sheep.  But  short 
of  this  we  can  make  sure  of  nothing ;  and  since  *'  mak- 
ing sure"  is  the  very  business  of  science,  it  would 
seem  desirable  to  drop  the  term,  which,  when  used  in 
this  connection,  is  bound  to  raise  delusive  hopes.  By 
using  this  term  we  disguise  from  ourselves  the  con- 
tingent character  of  our  knowledge,  clothe  it  with 
attributes  of  universal  validity  which  it  does  not 
possess,  ascribe  to  it  a  wholly  fictitious  value  as  a 
guide  for  practice,  and  end  by  discovering  that  we 
have  built  our  house  on  the  sand  of  an  abstraction. 

The  power  of  these  unwarranted  expectations  is  at 
the  present  moment  very  great,  and  is  answerable  for 
plentiful  mischief.  To  the  scientific  obsession  we  may 
attribute  in  large  measure  the  enormously  exaggerated 
estimate  of  the  value  of  Law  as  a  means  of  securing 
the  well-being  of  Society,  so  characteristic  of  Western 
civilisation.  Instructive  theories  have  been  put  forward 
for  "  reconciling  "  the  Individual  and  the  Social  Will ; 
but  these  should  not  be  allowed  to  blind  us  to  the 
growing  tendency  to  rely  on  Social  Science  for  the 
construction  of  a  legal  mechanism  which  shall  do  for 
us  what  it  is  perfectly  certain  we  can  only  do  for 
ourselves.  This  tendency  is  sapping  the  will-power  of 
men.  Under  the  same  influence  a  vast  amount  of  bad 
treatment  is  being  meted  out  to  humanity,  in  many 
parts  of  the  world,  by  the  people  who  call  themselves 
"we."  The  scientific  obsession  is  largely  responsible 
for  the  mishandling  of  the  young,  whether  by  artificial 
systems  of  "  moral "  or  other  education ;  for  gross 
wrongs   done   to   subject  races ;   for  the  disrespect  of 


236  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

alien  religions ;  for  arrogance  and  narrowmindedness 
of  many  sorts ;  and  above  all,  for  an  interminable 
process  of  social  doctorings  and  dosings  and  meddlings 
which,  in  spite  of  some  professional  pomposity,  is  but 
half-informed,  and  therefore  greatly  to  be  feared. 
There  is  one  thing  more  dangerous  than  total  ignor- 
ance :  it  is  the  pretence  of  complete  knowledge.  That, 
we  venture  to  think,  is  a  standing  peril  of  our  time, 
and  the  justification  of  our  present  plea.  We  are 
constantly  embarking  upon  enterprises  of  education, 
of  reform,  of  international  policy,  in  which  we  take 
account  only  of  what  is  done,  of  what  is  given,  of 
what  is  taught,  and  give  no  thought  to  the  reaction  of 
other  wills  on  the  action  of  our  own,  thereby  dis- 
regarding the  most  important  factor  in  the  production 
of  the  final  result.  To  spread  knowledge  on  a  given 
subject  is  one  thing,  and  a  good  one ;  to  assume  that 
other  men  will  make  the  same  use  of  this  knowledge 
that  we  make  is  another  and  a  highly  dangerous  thing. 
What  use  they  will  make  of  it  we  have  no  science  to 
predict  and  no  power  to  enforce. 

We  may,  for  example,  be  of  the  opinion  that  the 
process  of  "  falling  in  love  "  which  now  determines  the 
mating  of  mankind,  and  thereby  seals  the  fate  of  the 
next  generation,  is  a  kind  of  chartered  madness  —  a 
thing  which  has  won  a  licence  from  poets  to  mock 
at  sound  knowledge  and  play  havoc  with  the  stock- 
breeding  of  humanity.  We  may  point  out  that  the 
human  race  will  have  no  control  over  its  own  future 
until  men  have  found  some  more  rational  method  of 
choosing  their  mates  than  that  of  falling  in  love  with 
the  first  attractive  face  or  elegant  figure  that  may  swim 


THE   MANIPULATION   OF  MAN  237 

into  their  ken.  We  may  even  plead,  with  a  recent 
writer,  that  the  custom  of  "  proposing  marriage  "  should 
be  abolished  and  that  "  parenthood  "  should  be  proposed 
instead  ;  and  we  may  imagine  the  blessed  results  to 
posterity  if  young  people  were  to  arrange  their  love- 
making  exclusively  on  this  basis  and  marry  only  after  a 
careful  study  of  the  type  of  children  likely  to  issue  from 
their  union. 

Here  is  a  picture  of  a  young  man  in  love,  uncon- 
sciously taking  the  first  steps  in  a  process  whose 
ultimate  issue,  for  all  he  knows,  will  be  angemic, 
tubercular,  or  criminal  offspring — one  more  contribu- 
tion to  the  degeneracy  of  the  race : — 

"  Und  herrlich,  in  der  Jugend  Prangen, 
Wie  ein  Gebild  aus  Himmelshohn, 
Mit  ziichtigen,  verschamten  Wangen 
Sieht  er  die  Jungfrau  vor  sich  stehn. 
Da  fasst  ein  namenloses  Sehnen 
Des  Jiinglings  Herz,  er  irrt  allein, 
Aus  seinen  Augen  brechen  Thranen, 
Er  flieht  der  Briider  wilden  Reihn. 
Errothend  folgt  er  ihren  Spuren 
Und  ist  von  ihrem  Gruss  begliickt, 
Das  Schonste  sucht  er  auf  den  Fluren, 
Womit  er  seine  Liebe  schmiickt. 
O  zarte  Sehnsucht,  susses  HofFen ! 
Der  ersten  Liebe  goldne  Zeit  I 
Das  Auge  sieht  den  Himmel  ofFen, 
Es  schwelgt  das  Herz  in  Seligkeit; 
O  dass  sie  ewig  griine  bliebe, 
Die  Schone  Zeit  der  jungen  Liebe  !  "  ^ 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  Science  of  Man,  can 
anything  be  more  absurd  or  pitiful  than  this  ?  Suppose 
a  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  approaching  his  annual 
Budget  in  the  utterly  disorganised  condition  of  mind 

1  Schiller  ;  Das  Lied  von  der  Glocke. 


238  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

and  body  ascribed  to  this  well-drawn  type  of  the  amor- 
ous youth,  bursting  into  sentimental  tears  before  the 
complications  of  the  income  tax,  trembling  in  every 
vein  at  the  apparition  of  his  surplus,  wildly  rushing 
from  the  Cabinet  and  hiding  himself  in  the  cellar  at 
the  bare  mention  of  an  old  age  pension  or  a  brewer's 
licence.  What  would  become  of  the  Finance  of  the 
Nation  if  psychological  phenomena  such  as  these  were 
the  normal  accompaniment  of  each  attempt  to  adjust 
taxation  or  control  expenditure  ?  And  what  are  we 
to  say  in  presence  of  the  fact  that  these  phenomena  are 
the  normal  conditions  in  which  an  enterprise  of  infin- 
itely greater  moment  than  Finance  is  most  frequently 
begun  —  I  refer,  of  course,  to  the  breeding  of  the 
race  ?  What  cruel  trick  is  this  that  Nature  has  played 
us — that  she  seems  to  suspend  our  reason  at  the  very 
moment  when  everything  depends  on  rational  thought ; 
that  just  when  we  ought  to  be  calmly  considering  the 
interests  of  human  stock-breeding,  she  either  blots  the 
whole  question  out  of  our  minds  or  makes  us  look  upon 
it  as  a  loathsome,  abominable,  unholy  thing — establish- 
ing an  unutterable  repugnance  between  all  such  calcu- 
lations and  that  "  Gebild  aus  Himmelshohn "  before 
which  we  stand  amazed  and  trembling,  our  veins  on 
fire,  our  brain  half  paralysed,  our  eyes  blinded  with 
tears,  our  foolish  tongues  unable  to  stammer  one  poor 
word  ? 

In  so  arranging  matters.  Nature,  we  must  conclude, 
is  either  the  most  cruel  of  stepmothers,  or  else  she  has 
some  deep  design  which  the  Science  of  Man  has  not 
yet  penetrated  and  with  which  it  would  be  well-advised 
not  to  rashly  interfere.  Leaving  that  aside,  however, 
I  think  we  may  accept  it  as  obvious  that  in  this  one 


THE   MANIPULATION  OF  MAN  239 

matter  alone  we  are  dealing  with  a  human  situation  so 
vast,  so  many-sided,  so  complex,  that  no  scientific  solu- 
tion, no  group  of  scientific  principles,  is  quite  far- 
reaching  enough  to  cover  it.  Such  bits  or  aspects  of 
it  as  we  may  abstract  from  the  whole  and  consider 
apart,  are  a  mere  inconsiderable  fragment  of  the  total 
issue,  of  which  the  roots  are  in  Tophet  and  the  branches 
among  the  stars.  Nor  can  we  tell  what  will  happen, 
what  new  and  unsuspected  reaction  of  the  conscious 
will  may  take  place,  when,  having  solved  to  our  satis- 
faction some  fragmentary  aspect  of  the  total  problem, 
we  throw  that  solution  back,  as  a  bit  of  new  leaven, 
into  the  boiling  ferment  of  mysterious  forces  that  are 
here  at  work.  A  pleasing  fancy,  too  long  indulged, 
bids  us  hope  that  the  ebullition  will  cease  the  instant 
that  science  is  cast  on  the  flood.  But  experience 
teaches  that  science,  thus  introduced,  joins  the  turmoil 
instead  of  calming  it,  or  gives  new  vigour  to  the  gods 
who  trouble  the  waters  and  raise  the  wind.  Certainly 
it  will  be  a  long  time  before  we  can  induce  the 
amorous  youth  of  Schiller's  poem,  who  is  here  the 
type  of  a  portentous  human  fact,  to  restrain  his 
tears  and  his  blushes,  to  act  like  a  rational  being, 
and  calmly  study  Eugenics  with  his  beloved.  Whether 
by  so  doing  our  youth  would  or  would  not  make  a 
greater  mess  of  the  business  he  has  on  hand  than 
he  now  makes — whether,  I  mean,  the  stock-breed- 
ing interests  of  humanity  have  much  to  gain  by  the 
introduction  of  the  scientific  temper  into  their  pre- 
liminary stages — is  a  question  on  which  nobody  has 
the  right  to  dogmatise  in  advance.  It  is,  at  all 
events,  a  permissible  hypothesis  that  Nature,  whose 
arrangements  at  this  particular  point  are  so  eminently 


240  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

unscientific,  is  not  the  blind  and  blundering  fool  of  our 
first  impressions.  Were  we  fully  informed  of  all  that 
is  here  involved,  we  might  be  forced  to  admit,  in  face 
of  all  our  scientific  prepossessions,  that  the  interests  of 
the  family,  of  the  race,  of  the  future,  are  far  safer  in 
the  hands  of  Schiller's  love-stricken,  emotion-blinded 
youth  than  they  would  be  if  his  place  were  taken  by 
some  prize-stallion  of  a  man  carefully  chosen,  ad  hoc, 
by  a  committee  of  experts.  Be  that  as  it  may,  we  may 
easily  assure  ourselves  that  the  situation  before  us  will 
not  reduce  itself  to  the  dimensions  of  any  scientific 
problem  whatsoever. 

II 

That  the  life  of  Man  can  be  brought  within  the  four 
corners  of  formulated  science  is,  however,  but  a  local 
variety  of  a  much  more  comprehensive  assumption. 
This  assumption  in  its  general  form  is  the  notion,  to 
which  frequent  allusion  has  already  been  made,  that 
the  Universe  itself  is  essentially  a  problem-to-be-solved, 
and  that,  per  contra,  the  one  supreme  concern  of  man 
is  to  discover  the  secret  which  gives  the  solution.  Than 
this  notion  I  know  of  nothing  more  deeply  rooted  in 
the  soil  of  modern  thought,  more  strongly  intrenched 
in  current  habits  of  mind,  more  widely  characteristic  of 
different  schools  (even  of  those  most  opposed  to  each 
other  in  other  respects),  more  insistent,  more  baneful, 
or  more  difficult  to  combat. 

The  most  general  classification  one  can  make  of 
modern  thinkers  divides  them  into  those  who  teach 
that  the  problem  of  the  Universe  can  be  solved,  and 
those  who  teach  that  it  cannot.  Both  are  agreed  in 
the  implication,   at   all  events,  that   the   Universe    is 


THE   MANIPULATION   OF   MAN  241 

essentially  enigmatical ;  that  it  addresses  the  human 
mind  primarily  and  fundamentally  in  the  form  of  an 
interrogation.  Both  are  agreed  that  our  ultimate 
business  with  Reality  is  to  know  what  it  is  or  what 
it  means,  to  answer  its  challenge  by  showing  that 
we  have  found  it  out.  The  same  implication  runs 
through  the  whole  literature  of  doubt  and  scepticism 
on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  it  forms  the 
basis  of  many  religious  books  and  of  much  preaching. 
Religion  is  supposed  to  stand  or  fall  with  our  ability 
to  produce  a  triumphant  answer  to  the  Riddle  of  the 
Universe.  Hence  it  is  that  those  who  maintain  that 
the  riddle  cannot  be  solved  will,  as  a  rule,  have  little 
to  do  with  religion,  while  those  who  support  religion 
claim  that  the  riddle  is  not  only  soluble  but  solved — 
whether  by  natural  reason  or  revelation  matters  not. 
Remove  those  underlying  assumptions,  and  the  greater 
part  both  of  Gnostic  and  Agnostic  literature  would  be 
meaningless  ;  affirm  that  Man  has  more  important  busi- 
ness with  the  world  than  the  bare  discovery  of  its  secret, 
and  the  ground  vanishes  on  which  we  are  conducting  the 
larger  half  of  our  disputes.  If  the  appeal  which  Reality 
makes  to  knowledge  is  one  element  only  in  its  total 
appeal  to  the  whole  man  ;  if  interrogation  as  to  its  own 
nature  is  only  one  of  an  infinite  number  of  forms  in  which 
the  divine  Logos  speaks  to  the  soul,  then  the  whole  con- 
troversy between  Gnosticism  and  Agnosticism,  between 
faith  and  doubt,  as  now  carried  on,  will  sink  into  a 
position  of  minor  significance,  and  the  way  will  perhaps 
be  opened  into  new  realms  of  "  spiritual "  life.  We 
should  then  say  to  the  Agnostics :  "  Granted  that  the 
question  as  to  the  ultimate  nature  of  things  cannot  be 

answered,  that  the  door  of  knowledge  is  for  ever  closed 

1& 


242  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

against  us  on  that  side,  there  yet  remain  open  a  multi- 
tude of  other  doors  through  which  famihar  intercourse 
may  be  carried  on.  The  most  you  have  done  is  to 
convince  us  that  ReaUty  does  not  talk  and  cannot  be 
made  to  talk  to  us  in  the  plain  prose  of  the  scientific 
intellect.  But  this  makes  less  difference  than  you 
think,  and  is  far  from  cancelling  the  terms  of  intimacy 
between  ourselves  and  a  Reality  which,  though  dumb 
in  prose,  is  eloquent  in  poetry  and  in  infinite  other 
forms  of  expression  that  are  not  susceptible  of  verbal 
reproduction."  And  to  the  Gnostics  our  speech  would 
be  equally  plain.  "We  are  indebted  to  you,"  we 
should  say,  "for  revealing  to  us  the  secret  of  the 
Universe.  But  even  if  you  had  failed  to  do  so,  we 
shouldn't  have  lost  heart.  For  just  as  a  lover  requires 
no  '  solution '  of  his  mistress,  and  loves  her  perhaps 
the  more  because  she  abides  his  question  as  a  mystery 
he  cannot  fathom,  riding  through  thick  and  thin  to  win 
her,  all  enigmatical  as  she  is,  for  his  very  own,  so  we,  in 
accepting  your  solution,  are  conscious  that  on  the  whole 
we  could  have  got  on  without  it,  and  are  not  quite 
certain  that  you  have  done  us  great  good.  Nay,  we 
will  be  bold  to  remind  you  that  if  your  own  interests 
in  Reality  are  limited  by  what  you  can  scientifically 
formulate  as  to  its  ultimate  nature,  you  are  in  peril  of 
encountering  the  fate  of  Lot's  wife." 

It  were  to  be  wished  that  more  attention  were  given 
to  the  part  played  in  modern  thought  by  the  Will-to- 
have-problems.  It  is  certain  that  some  of  our  most 
distressing  intellectual  difficulties  have  no  other  justi- 
fication for  their  existence  than  a  love  of  problems 
for  their  own  sake  and  an  obstinate  determination  on 
our  part  that  they  shall  exist.     A  consciousness  without 


THE   MANIPULATION   OF   MAN  243 

problems  seems  to  be  a  contradiction  in  terms.  Problem- 
solving  is  treated  as  the  air,  and  food,  and  raiment  of 
spirit,  nay,  as  the  spirit's  very  life.  The  word  *'  Prob- 
lem "  is  indeed  the  name  of  our  Grand  Fetish  ;  it  is  the 
Mumbo  Jumbo  of  scientific  ritual  and  intellectual 
sorcery  ;  it  is  the  Benamuckee  vv^hom  our  old  men  salute 
on  the  mountain  tops  v^ith  long-dravs^n  O's  and  to  whom, 
like  the  people  in  Friday's  island,  we  shall,  presumably, 
all  go  when  we  die.^ 

Whence  comes  this  strange  obsession  ?  Not  from  the 
Hebrew,  we  may  be  sure.  Shall  we  lay  it,  then,  to  the 
account  of  the  Greek?  Hardly.  Is  it  not  rather  a 
Gothic  inheritance,  the  spirit  which  in  ancient  days 
looked  upon  the  world  as  a  thing  to  conquer,  and  which 
now,  revived  in  us  with  unabated  ardour,  treats  the  whole 
universe  as  a  defenceless  country,  sails  up  its  navigable 
rivers  with  invading  fleets  of  thought,  falls  upon  facts  as 
upon  fat  cities  waiting  to  be  spoiled,  scatters  knowledge 
like  a  consuming  fire,  and  wields  the  pen  as  though  it 
were  a  sword  ? 

"To  overcome  the  world."  Are  there  not  some 
among  us  who  take  that  expression  as  a  literal  state- 
ment of  the  business  of  human  life  ?  Is  not  the  over- 
coming of  the  world  sometimes  presented  to  us  as  a  kind 
of  military,  or,  at  least,  a  commercial  project  ?  Here  are 
we,  yonder  is  the  world  ;  and  the  question  addressed  to 
us  is,  '*  What  do  you  make  of  it  ?  How  do  you  propose 
to  get  it  into  your  power,  to  master  it,  to  make  it  serve 
your  purpose  and  not  its  own  ?  Is  not  the  world  in  arms 
against  you?  Are  you  not  in  jeopardy  every  hour? 
Does  not  the  world  threaten  you  and  carry  out  its 
threats  ?  Does  it  not  strike  at  your  happiness  through 
1  See  Robinson  Crusoe's  conversation  with  Friday,  quoted  on  p.  138. 


244  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

your  body  and  through  your  mind  ;  does  it  not  persecute 
you  with  its  tempests  and  make  you  afraid  with  its 
storms,  and  finally  engulph  you  in  an  all-devouring 
death  ?  Does  it  not  lay  gins  and  snares  for  your  steps 
at  every  turn,  and  cunningly  persuade  you  to  your  own 
ruin,  to  become  conformed  unto  itself?^  On  the  other 
hand,  is  not  the  world  a  mine  of  riches  to  him  who  can 
turn  its  undeveloped  resources  to  good  account  ?  Can 
you  not  divert  these  destructive  forces  into  useful 
channels  and  turn  the  world's  hostility  into  an  alliance  ? 
Armed  with  a  knowledge  of  its  final  strategy,  possessed 
of  its  *  secret,'  can  you  not  outflank  and  beat  it,  not  in 
mere  isolated  skirmishes  but  in  one  decisive  action, 
force  it  to  capitulate  all  along  the  line,  hoist  your 
flag  on  its  innermost  citadel  and  compel  the  beaten  foe 
to  swear  allegiance  to  your  own  cause  ?  What,  then, 
do  you  make  of  the  world  ? " 

To  those  who  ask  these  questions,  and  to  those  who 
think  that  the  one  thing  needful  is  to  answer  them,  the 
world  will  necessarily  present  itself  as  a  problem-to-be- 
solved,  and  until  the  solution  is  obtained  their  life  will 
be  baffled  and  their  hearts  unsatisfied.  Armed  with  no 
comprehensive  formula  of  life,  and  having  only  frag- 
mentary knowledge  of  the  enemy's  tactics  here  and 
there,  they  will  feel  themselves  outmatched  and  doomed 
to  be  beaten  by  that  final  strategy  of  the  Universe  whose 
mysterious  secret  they  cannot  penetrate.  They  will  be 
able  to  **  make  "  nothing  of  the  world  ;  for  how  can  one 
"make"  anything  of  that  whose  final  nature  you  do 

1  This  seems  to  be  implied  in  Huxley's  famous  comparison  of  life  to 
a  game  of  chess.  The  idea  of  outwitting  Nature  at  her  own  game  is 
extremely  popular  and  thoroughly  characteristic  of  the  temper  of  an 
industrial  age. 


THE   MANIPULATION   OF   MAN  245 

not  understand  ?  Can  you  "  make "  anything  out  of 
electricity  without  understanding  it  ?  So  then,  instead 
of  being  able  to  exploit  the  Universe,  these  people  will 
suspect  that  the  Universe  is  exploiting  them.  They 
will  have  to  endure  a  complete  reversal  of  what  they 
regard  as  the  only  satisfactory  arrangement.  They 
will  see  no  good  in  a  world  which  they  cannot  handle, 
manage,  and  control,  as  they  could  do  and  would  do  if 
only  they  could  master  its  "  secret."  They  will  despise 
it,  because  they  can  "  make  nothing  "  of  it.  "  It  is  not 
a  rational  universe,"  they  will  say.  "  For  a  rational 
universe  is  a  universe  which  capitulates  to  man  ;  which, 
after  due  mining,  breaching,  bombarding,  and  general 
besieging,  renders  up  its  'key'  to  the  intelligent 
besiegers  and  bids  them  enter  in  and  take  possession 
of  itself.  But  here  is  a  fool  of  a  universe  which  refuses 
to  give  in ;  which  declines  to  be  discovered ;  which 
offers  an  impenetrable  barrier-reef  to  the  warships  of 
philosophy ;  which  suffers  no  human  formula  to  possess 
its  towers ;  which  guards  its  fat  cities  from  devouring 
thought,  and  is  uncut  by  the  pens  which  we  have 
sharpened  with  swords.     Therefore  there  is  no  God." 

Conclusions  of  this  kind  are  certainly  inevitable  if 
you  grant  the  assumptions  on  which  they  ultimately 
rest.  What  are  these?  Well,  unless  we  are  grossly 
mistaken,  they  may  be  summed  up  in  a  general  assump- 
tion that  Reality,  or  the  Universe,  is  a  kind  of  lock,  and 
that  the  supreme  business  of  mankind  on  this  planet 
is  to  find  the  key.  This  metaphor,  violent  as  it  is, 
does  no  injustice  to  the  facts.  There  are  few  works 
of  modern  philosophy  which  do  not  contain  an  avowal, 
more  or  less  explicit,  that  experience  is  problematical 
— problematical  in  no  incidental  fashion,  but  essentially, 


246  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

fundamentally,  and  through  and  through.  The  problem 
that  lurks  in  experience  is  its  characteristic  feature ;  this 
stands  out  before  all  the  rest  of  its  elements,  and  how- 
ever these  may  come  and  go,  the  ''  problem  "  is  always 
there.  To  take  experience  without  its  problem  would 
be  to  leave  Hamlet  out  of  the  play.  Experience  must 
present  itself  in  the  form  interrogative  "  What  am  I  "  ; 
presented  in  the  form  positive  "  I  am  so  and  so  "  it  is 
a  contradiction  in  terms.  Experience,  therefore,  is  a 
language  which  conveys  no  direct  meaning,  and  has 
to  be  translated  into  some  other  form  of  speech.  Un- 
fortunately, however,  this  new  language  turns  out  on 
examination  to  be  a  kind  of  experience,  too,  which  in 
its  turn  requires  translation  into  yet  another,  and  so  on 
ad  infinitum.  Thus  the  only  meaning  we  can  discern 
in  experience  is  that  of  providing  employment  to  an 
endless  succession  of  translators,  and  this,  so  far  from 
clearing  the  matter  up  and  convincing  us  that  we  have 
got  to  the  bottom  of  things,  ends  by  leaving  the  thing 
to  be  explained  more  inexplicable  than  ever. 

By  reading  the  metaphor  in  different  ways  we  may 
distinguish  the  subdivisions  of  this  lock-philosophy. 
Sometimes  it  is  **  we "  who  have  to  find  the  key,  this 
having  somehow  got  detached  from  the  lock  and  become 
lost  or  hidden.  Sometimes  the  lock  itself  does  the 
business ;  it  is  in  a  state  of  timeless  evolution,  evolving 
into  its  own  key  and  yet  remaining  a  lock  all  the  same. 

Now  all  this  has  no  other  result  than  to  leave  us  in 
the  presence  of  a  universe  pour  rire,  "  Rational "  such 
a  universe  may  be ;  but  if  so,  it  is  either  ridiculously 
rational  or  rationally  ridiculous.  That,  of  course,  is 
not  a  sufficient  reason  for  rejecting  these  conclusions. 
We  must  take  things  as  they  are  and  put  up  with  them 


THE   MANIPULATION   OF   MAN  247 

as  best  we  may ;  and  if  the  Universe  is  ridiculous  then 
Philosophy  does  its  appointed  work  in  revealing  the 
fact.  We  have  no  more  right  to  assume  from  the  outset 
that  the  world  is  a  serious  and  not  an  amusing  proposi- 
tion than  we  have  to  assume  that  the  world  was  made 
in  six  days.  We  may  justly  express  surprise  at  anyone 
who  does  not  perceive  that  there  is  de  facto  a  grim 
humour  in  these  conclusions ;  but  no  reason,  save  an 
unphilosophical  one,  can  justify  the  attitude  of  a  man 
who  should  say  to  the  philosophers,  "  I  will  accept  your 
teachings  if  they  make  me  serious  or  force  me  to  my 
knees ;  but  I  will  not  accept  them  if  they  turn  experi- 
ence into  a  farce." 

Our  own  reason  for  rejecting  these  doctrines  is 
different.  We  reject  them  because  the  assumptions  on 
which  they  rest  appear  to  us  to  be  gratuitous.  We  are 
aware  that  there  is  contradiction  in  experience ;  but  we 
entirely  deny  that  experience  is  essentially  contradictory. 
The  contradictions  that  appear  in  experience  seem  to 
us  to  arise  only  in  so  far  as  we  treat  the  Universe  'ex- 
clusively from  the  point  of  view  of  those  interests  and 
ends  of  ours  which  require  us  to  understand  it.  But 
outside  this  small  and  artificially  limited  area  of  our  life 
there  are  regions  of  experience  in  which  contradiction 
fails  to  appear,  and  others  into  which  the  bare  notion 
of  contradiction  cannot  be  so  much  as  introduced. 
Over  against  the  relatively  few  moments  of  life  when 
things  say  to  us  "  What  are  we  ? "  and  we,  trying  to 
answer,  get  involved  in  contradictions,  there  are  an 
infinity  of  moments  when  things  say  "  I  am  what  I 
am,"  and  when,  no  questions  being  asked,  the  contradic- 
tion that  comes  from  trying  to  answer  is  entirely  absent 
from  the  situation.     Thus,  for  example,  if  I  insist  on 


248  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

treating  Space  as  something  to  be  understood,  something 
which  has  no  other  function  than  to  gratify  my  curiosity 
regarding  its  nature,  immediately  the  well-known  anti- 
nomies make  their  appearance.  But  why  should  I  treat 
Space  in  that  way,  and  in  that  way  only  ?  What  duty 
do  1  owe  to  the  Grand  Fetish  which  forbids  me  to  treat 
Space  otherwise  than  a  thing  about  whose  ultimate  nature 
questions  are  to  be  answered  and  problems  solved? 
Surely  Space  enters  into  my  experience  in  a  thousand 
forms  which  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the 
problem  of  finding  out  what  Space  is.  1  can  master  the 
whole  science  of  Geometry  without  solving  that  question. 
I  can  measure  Space  and  move  about  in  Space  without 
encountering  even  the  faintest  suggestion  of  a  contra- 
diction. In  short,  the  contradiction  does  not  appear 
until  for  a  purpose  of  my  own,  a  narrowly  intellectual 
purpose,  I  force  myself  into  its  presence.  And  so  with 
everything  else  that  enters  into  experience — yes,  even 
with  that  Tragedy  of  Good  and  Evil  which  is  the 
hardest  of  all  to  "understand."^  The  contradiction 
appears  only  when  we  regard  the  object  as  having  no 
story  to  tell  save  that  which  can  be  told  in  the  language 
of  our  conceptional  logic.  But  what  right  have  we 
to  regard  it  exclusively  in  that  way  ? 

We  are  incUned  to  think,  therefore,  that  the  demand 
for  a  Science  of  Man,  for  a  key  or  bunch  of  keys  to 
human  life,  is  a  special  form  or  local  variety  of  a 
much  more  comprehensive  determination — that  which 

^  Lest  this  should  seem  to  be  too  lightly  passed  over,  it  may  be 
added  that  the  Tragedy  of  Good  and  Evil,  as  a  thing  to  be  discussed, 
can  never  be  "solved."  Nothing  less  than  the  acting  of  the  drama  can 
express  the  meaning. 


OF 


^^^IL^^fflE   MANIPULATION   OF   MAN  249 

insists  on  treating  the  whole  Universe  as  essentially 
a  lock.  Now  we  who  regard  that  determination  as 
gratuitous  or  (in  our  suspicious  moments)  as  a  mere 
professional  prejudice, — we,  I  say,  are  not  in  the  least 
dismayed  by  our  inability  to  produce  a  key  either  to 
the  Universe  in  general  or  to  human  life  in  particular. 
Any  shock  of  surprise  we  may  have  felt  at  first  in 
realising  that  the  key  was  not  in  our  own  pockets,  and 
that  keys  in  other  people's  pockets  wouldn't  act,  was 
entirely  swallowed  up  in  the  joy  of  discovering  that 
the  Universe  keeps  innumerable  doors  unlocked,  that 
its  alleged  "secret"  is  open,  and  therefore  no  secret 
at  all.  There  was  a  time,  it  must  be  confessed,  when 
the  Agnostic's  proof  that  reality  is  without  a  "key" 
appeared  to  us  not  only  convincing,  but  disconcerting. 
It  still  appears  to  us  convincing,  but  it  disconcerts  us 
no  longer.  We  now  see  that  the  reason  Reality  has 
no  "  key  "  is  the  simple  one — that  there  is  no  lock  on 
the  door.  Finding,  then,  that  the  notion  of  locks  and 
keys  is  inapplicable  to  experience  as  a  whole,  we  are 
willing  enough  to  concede  to  the  Agnostic  that  the 
key  cannot  be  found.  Only  we  are  bound  to  add  that 
the  statement,  so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  is  entirely 
without  meaning.  If  any  one  thinks  it  worth  while 
to  prove  that  there  is  no  key  to  Art  or  Beauty,  it  is 
not  for  us  to  interfere  with  him ;  we  can  only  point 
out  that  his  proof  in  no  way  affects  our  appreciation 
of  the  sunset,  the  ninth  Symphony,  or  the  face  of  the 
Sistine  Madonna — which  is  the  thing  we  mainly  care 
about.  In  like  manner,  the  proof  that  the  ultimate 
nature  of  the  Universe  is  unknowable  leaves  us  un- 
moved, because  we  can  still  find  business  with  the 
Universe  which  is,  as  we  think,  far  more   interesting 


250  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

and  far  more  important  than  that  of  understanding  its 
ultimate  nature.  Of  course  there  is  nothing  to  prevent 
a  man  who  has  a  hobby  for  formulae  from  turning  his 
back  on  everything  that  cannot  be  formulated  and  from 
despising  the  world  on  that  account ;  just  as  there  is 
nothing  to  prevent  a  man  with  a  hobby  for  chess  from 
being  insufferably  bored  by  everything  else.  Such  a 
person,  however,  appears  to  us  perversely  self-limited, 
and  we  are  sorry  for  him.  We  are  sorry  because  the 
most  interesting  phases  of  experience  will  not  reduce 
themselves  to  the  dimensions  of  his  hobby,  nor  can  we 
see  that  anything  would  be  gained  even  if  they  would. 
Among  the  many  self-denying  ordinances  which  man 
can  impose  upon  himself,  none  appears  to  us  so  super- 
erogatory as  this  Positivist  device  of  restricting  one's 
concerns  to  the  things  he  can  understand.  For  our 
own  part,  were  we  under  compulsion  to  confine  our 
interest  to  any  one  type  of  experience,  the  type  that 
we  can  thoroughly  understand  would  be  among  the  last 
on  which  our  choice  would  fall.  To  have  this  type  of 
experience  along  with  others  may  be  a  good  thing ; 
to  have  no  other  but  this  is  quite  a  different  proposition, 
and  it  does  not  attract  us. 


XI.— MORALITY   BY  THE   CARD 

Kat  €vpeOr}  /jlol  tj  kvrokr)  r)  cts  ^w^v,  avr-q  ets  davarov 

It  has  often  been  remarked  that  the  more  a  man  talks 
about  certain  virtues  the  less  likely  he  is  to  have 
them.  The  same  suspicion,  more  widely  generalised, 
was  expressed  by  the  cynic  who  said,  "Whenever 
a  man  mentions  his  moral  principles  you  may  be  sure 
he  is  going  to  play  you  a  dirty  trick." 

These  sayings  are  valuable,  not  for  their  scientific 
accuracy,  but  as  indicating  that  men  in  general  are 
awake  to  an  important  but  elementary  truth,  namely, 
that  deeds  rather  than  words  are  the  proper  medium  for 
the  expression  of  morality.  Just  as  movement  cannot 
be  represented  by  the  stiff  masses  of  architecture,  so  the 
Good,  which  involves  a  creative  principle,  is  impatient  of 
the  rigidities  of  formal  speech.  Used  as  a  vehicle  for 
the  conveyance  of  the  moral  fact,  speech  is  inadequate 
to  the  burden.  A  stronger  and  a  more  elastic  medium 
must  be  found  before  just  expression  can  be  attained. 
By  common  consent  nothing  less  than  action,  life, 
personality,  will  do  justice  to  the  moral  fact. 

The  tendency  to  make  talk  do  the  business,  to  substi- 
tute words  for  things  and  formulae  for  facts — a  tendency 
which,  as  we  have  seen  reason  to  believe,  has  damaged 
whole  systems  of  philosophy — is  recognised  by  all  men 
as  one  of  the  standing  dangers  of  morality.     The  ques- 

251 


252  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

tion — "Why  call  ye  me  Lord,  Lord,  and  do  not  the 
things  that  1  say  ? "  contains  a  point  which  none  of  us 
is  likely  to  miss. 

Deplorable  as  are  the  results  which  flow  from  this 
habit,  we  may,  at  all  events,  console  ourselves  by  remem- 
bering the  ease  with  which  its  presence  is  detected. 
In  other  spheres — for  example,  in  the  Theory  of  Know- 
ledge— the  substitution  of  formula  for  fact,  of  symbols 
for  realities,  can  often  be  effected  unperceived,  even 
by  the  author  of  the  substitution,  and  a  generation 
or  a  century  may  elapse  before  men  discover  the  trick 
they  have  played  on  their  own  minds.  In  morals, 
however,  the  distinction  between  the  thing  and  the 
theory  of  the  thing  lies  upon  the  surface,  and  he  who 
runs  may  read.  We  can  watch  the  process  of  substitu- 
tion going  on  under  our  eyes,  and  have  to  wait  only 
a  moment,  as  it  were,  to  see  the  disaster  that  results. 
We  do  indeed  confuse  ourselves  at  times  by  the  use  of 
such  phrases  as  "moral  precepts,"  "moral  science," 
"  moral  education,"  and  need  to  give  our  minds  a  sharp 
reminder  that  the  adjective  is  here  misapplied  as  entirely 
as  it  would  be  if  we  were  to  speak  of  a  moral  colour, 
a  moral  landscape,  a  moral  drug.  Yet  we  all  know, 
though  we  sometimes  forget,  that  the  predicate  "moral  " 
attaches,  not  to  the  precepts,  but  to  the  man  who  makes 
use  of  them ;  not  to  the  science  or  the  education,  but 
to  the  actual  lives  which  result  from  either  or  both. 
"  Moral "  precepts  might  be  as  plentiful  as  blackberries 
and  as  excellent  as  the  stars  in  heaven  ;  "  moral "  science 
might  have  its  text-books  in  every  shop-window;  the 
elementary  schools  might  be  humming  and  roaring  with 
"moral"  education  from  one  end  of  the  land  to  the 
other  ;  but  all  this,  morally  considered,  would  of  course, 


MORALITY   BY  THE   CARD  263 

if  taken  by  itself,  amount  to  little  or  nothing.  So 
widely  recognised  is  the  distinction  between  the  moral 
fact  and  the  non-moral  formula,  which  often  seems  to 
do  duty  for  the  fact,  that  we  might  with  advantage 
begin  our  investigations  into  the  nature  of  all  experi- 
ence at  this  point.  By  thus  beginning  we  should 
have  a  clue  from  the  outset  to  an  error  whose  serpent- 
trail  can  be  followed  over  the  entire  field  of  Logic, 
Psychology,  and  Metaphysics. 

Familiar  as  this  distinction  is,  however,  it  can  be, 
and  is,  forgotten  with  wonderful  facility,  and  we  have 
still  to  contend  not  only  against  fatuous  metaphysics 
but  against  fatuous  morals. 

Morahty,  it  may  be  said,  shares  with  Religion  in  the 
proud  claim   of  having  survived  millenniums  of  talk. 
Were  Religion  and  Morality  other  than  immortal  they 
would  have  perished  long  ago — drowned  out,  disinte- 
grated and  swept  away  by  a  never-ending  rain  of  words 
poured  down  upon  them  from  the  unkindly  heavens. 
Watery  skies  have  been  the  portion  of  both  of  them, 
with  such  occasional  relief  of  sunshine  as  might  come 
when  it  pleased  God  to  send  forth  a  prophet  or  a  man 
of  action  on  the  earth.     For  the  last  hundred  years, 
in  particular,  these  two  have  had  to  bear  up  against  a 
rainy  season  which,  though  broken  by  welcome  gleams, 
has  damped  many  fires  and  chilled  many  hearts.     It 
is  as  though  some  god  or  demon  were  hurling  water- 
spouts of  verbiage  at  the  things  men  value  most,  with 
Religion  and  Morality  as  his  favourite  targets.      The 
obsessions  of  language  are  now  indeed  at  the  zenith  of 
their  power  ;  the  boastings  of  the  tongue,  always  shame- 
less, have  grown  to  a  universal  menace ;  and  morality, 
which  has  less  to  do  with  words  than  any  other  essential 


254  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

interest  of  life,  is  in  danger  of  becoming  with  many  of 
us  a  mere  verbal  experience.  Encouraged  by  a  pseudo- 
science  the  vain  hope  has  gone  abroad  that  by  the 
gradual  refinement  of  our  formulae  we  shall  come  to 
apprehend  the  Moral  Fact — which,  of  course,  can  be 
apprehended  only  in  the  doing  of  a  moral  deed. 

This  is  fatuous  morality :  it  begins  in  confusion  of 
mind  and  it  ends  in  disaster.  All  of  us  are  its  victims 
— more  or  less. 

For  example.  We  are  apt  to  believe  that  great 
good  will  be  done  by  inculcating  the  precept 
"  Imitate  the  Good  Samaritan."  That  some  good  will 
be  done  by  the  mere  repetition  of  this  precept  at 
appropriate  times  and  by  duly  qualified  persons  need 
not  be  doubted  ;  at  the  same  time  it  is  equally  certain 
that  much  harm  will  be  done  by  exaggerating  the  good 
which  this  precept  can  do.  Nothing,  in  fact,  could 
better  illustrate  the  limitations  of  fatuous  morality  and 
the  dangers  of  forgetting  them.  For  how  are  we  to 
imitate  the  Good  Samaritan,  and  what  would  imitation 
of  him  really  involve  ?  The  splendid  thing  about  the 
Good  Samaritan  was  that  he  refused  to  imitate  any- 
body. Had  his  morality  been  of  the  imitative  order  he 
would  have  done  after  the  manner  of  the  Priest  and 
the  Levite,  who  were  actually  following  approved 
exemplars  of  their  time  and  place.  So  long,  indeed,  as 
our  deeds  of  charity  are  mere  imitations  of  somebody 
else,  no  matter  of  whom,  the  principle  of  our  conduct 
is  far  nearer  to  that  of  the  Priest  and  the  Levite  than 
to  that  of  the  Good  Samaritan.  When  he  showed  mercy 
on  the  wounded  man  he  was  not  imitating  another  Good 
Samaritan  who  had  done  the  same  thing  on  a  previous 
occasion  ;  nor  was  he  remembering  some  precept  which 


MORALITY   BY  THE   CARD  255 

had  been  drilled  into  him  by  the  masters  of  his  youth 
or  the  pastors  of  his  manhood.  He  was  the  first.  His 
action,  far  from  giving  effect  to  any  fixed  rule  that  might 
have  been  taught  him  by  contemporary  moralists,  was 
a  flat  violation  of  the  respectable  moral  opinion  of  that 
time  and  place.  A  person  who  assists  a  wounded 
man  to-day  and  thinks  he  is  thereby  imitating  the 
Good  Samaritan  is  therefore  making  a  mistake,  which, 
though  it  may  flatter  his  self-conceit,  vitiates  his  moral 
judgment.  To  do  this  act  for  the  first  time,  in  defiance 
of  the  accepted  traditions  of  your  race,  is  one  thing  ;  to 
do  it  for  the  ten  thousandth  time  with  the  felt  approval 
of  the  world  at  your  back,  is  another  thing.  In  no 
relevant  sense  is  the  second  an  imitation  of  the  first. 
All  the  "  subjective  "  factors  of  the  two  situations  are 
different.  Our  pleasant  consciousness  that  this  kind  of 
conduct  has  been  sanctioned  by  the  highest  authority, 
ratified  by  the  moral  judgment  of  ages,  celebrated  in 
art,  proved  sound  in  principle  by  science,  and  com- 
mended by  the  most  illustrious  philosophers — need  it 
be  said  that  of  all  this  there  was  no  faintest  glimmer 
in  the  mind  of  the  Good  Samaritan  ?  In  place  of  it 
there  was,  I  suspect,  an  uncomfortable  feeling  that  if 
his  best  friends  saw  what  he  was  after  they  would  cut 
him  for  ever. 

How,  then,  can  we  imitate  the  Good  Samaritan? 
We  imitate  him,  not  by  reproducing  his  act,  but  by 
being  just  as  original,  just  as  creative,  just  as  in- 
different towards  fatuous  morality  as  he  was.  Without 
the  power  of  carving  out  for  ourselves  some  expression 
of  the  goodwill  which  no  existing  rules  either  cover 
or  contemplate,  there  will  never  be  the  faintest  flavour 
of   the   Good    Samaritan    about    anything  we  do   or 


ftm  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

attempt.  Should  we  ever  succeed  in  imitating  him, 
one  sure  remark  of  our  success  will  be  that  we  shall 
get  into  trouble,  even  as  the  Author  of  the  parable  got 
into  greater  trouble  for  a  similar  cause.  True  it  is 
that  not  every  one  who  does  an  unheard-of  and  surprising 
thing  can  set  up  as  an  imitator  of  the  Good  Samaritan. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Good  Samaritan  always  does  an 
unheard-of  and  surprising  thing.  He  shocks  somebody. 
He  "  goes  better  "  than  his  teachers,  and  there  are  few 
things  that  our  teachers  are  apt  to  resent  more  bitterly, 
and  punish  more  severely. 

It  comes,  then,  to  this.  If  rules  for  imitating  the 
Good  Samaritan  are  to  be  framed  and  "  taught "  by 
way  of  moral  education  either  to  children  or  adults, 
these  rules  must  take  the  form  of  telling  us  how  to  be 
morally  original.  And  this,  it  will  be  admitted,  is 
impossible. 

The  point  is  sufficiently  important  to  deserve  a  second 
illustration  from  the  same  source.  Were  one  asked  to 
describe  the  most  odious  form  of  hypocrisy  conceivable, 
we  should  surely  point  to  the  man  who  deliberately 
reproduces  the  part  of  the  Publican  in  the  parable  and 
deliberately  abjures  that  of  the  Pharisee — the  man  who 
says  inwardly,  "  I  thank  thee,  O  God,  that  I  am  not  as 
yonder  Pharisee.  I  don't  fast  twice  a  week  ;  I  don't 
give  tithes  of  all  I  possess,  but  duly,  and  at  the  proper 
time,  I  smite  upon  my  breast  and  cry, '  God  be  merciful 
to  me,  a  sinner.' "  The  splendid  thing  about  the  Publican 
— and  here  he  resembles  the  Good  Samaritan — was 
that  he  smote  upon  his  breast  before  any  authority  had 
laid  it  down  that  this  was  the  correct  thing  for  a  man  in 
his  position  to  do.  Surely  we  are  well  advised  in  not 
imitating  the  Publican ;   even  fatuous  morality  would 


MORALITY   BY   THE   CARD  257 

shrink  from  such  advice,  though  what  other  advice  it 
can  give  is  hard  to  say.  I  remember  reading  a  story — 
of  GaUic  provenance,  I  think — about  a  very  respectable 
member  of  the  middle  class  who  confessed  himself  a 
sinner  so  often  and  so  earnestly  that  the  idea  of  himself 
in  this  character  ultimately  got  hold  of  his  will  and 
began  to  express  itself  in  sinful  acts  of  the  most  in- 
credibly repulsive  types.  Psychologically  the  thing  is 
not  impossible,  and  in  milder  forms  it  is  the  actual 
result,  too  little  noted,  of  exaggerating  and  overstrain- 
ing the  functions  of  book-learnt  morality. 

Among  the  various  orders  of  fact  which  can  be 
classified,  moral  fact  is  the  promptest  in  declaring 
its  impatience  of  bookish  reproduction.  Significant 
evidence  of  this  may  be  found,  inter  alia,  in  the  reluctance 
of  all  healthy-minded  persons  to  submit  their  characters 
to  the  verbal  photographer.  Nobody,  of  course,  wishes 
to  hear  himself  described  as  "bad,"  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  who  enjoys  hearing  himself  being  described  as 
"good"?  An  illustrious  example  seems  to  suggest 
that  the  loftiest  natures  are  the  least  inclined  to  submit 
to  this  epithet ;  they  wince  under  it  as  if  stung  by  a 
lash.  It  is  from  no  fear  lest  a  damning  likeness  may 
result  that  a  man  of  high  temper  refuses  to  stand  up 
before  the  descriptive  artist.  The  sting  of  the  thing 
lies  in  the  supposition  that  he  desires  to  be  provided 
with  a  verbal  alter  ego,  to  see  himself  "  put  into  words  " 
of  any  kind  whatsoever.  Whatever  else  can  be  "  put 
into"  words,  it  is  certain  that  personality  will  always 
escape  them  and  always  feel  itself  wronged  when  the 
attempt  is  made  to  capture  it  by  a  formula  or  an  epithet. 
The  only  word  in  which  character  can  be  uttered  is,  of 
course,  a  word  made  flesh.     Not  to  be  confined  by  the 

17 


268  THE    ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

limitations  of  speech,  it  is  yet  susceptible  of  luminous 
expression  by  other  human  media — by  the  grouping  of 
personalities,  by  the  ordered  life  of  a  single  man,  or  by 
one  of  his  actions,  or  even  by  the  impression  of  his  face 
left  on  a  passer-by. 

This  may  help  us  to  understand  why  moral  science, 
as  written  in  certain  books,  differs  from  other  sciences 
in  being  so  strangely  inapplicable  to  the  moral  fact — in 
a  word,  so  useless.     For   morality  if  not   concrete   is 
nothing;  it  refuses,  therefore,  to  provide  the  abstrac- 
tions which  make  science,  in  the  ordinary  sense,  possible. 
The  other  sciences  reach  their  results,  as   everybody 
knows,  by  abstracting  particular  aspects  of  the  object 
under   consideration,   leaving   the    results   obtained   in 
one   department  to   be   adjusted  in   practice   to   those 
which  have  been  obtained  in  the  rest.     When  each  of 
the   sciences — including   the   historical,  the   social,  the 
economic — has   had   its  say,  the   problem  of  the  final 
adjustment  of  all  results  is  precisely  what  is  left  over 
to  morality.     The  word  morality  may  thus  be  said  to 
indicate   that   moment   in    life    when    the   process   of 
abstracting  is  over  and  done  with  and  something  else 
must  now  begin,  viz.  the  selective  and  creative  action 
of  the  will.     The  dinner,  so  to  speak,  has  been  cooked  ; 
the  various  dishes  have  been  examined  by  experts  and 
labelled  wholesome  or  poisonous  as  the  case  may  be ; 
and  the  problem  now  is,  "  What,  and  how  much,  are  you 
going  to  eat  ? "     If  at  this  point  a  moralist  appears  on 
the  scene  and  proposes  to  start  the  process  of  abstrac- 
tion over  again,  nothing  will  come  of  it  save  a  fresh 
cooking  of  the  dinner  and  a  fresh  examination  of  the 
viands ;  the  moral  "  problem  "  proper,  which  is  always 
"  What  shall  we  eat  ? "  will  remain  at  the  end  of  the 


MORALITY   BY  THE   CARD  259 

second  cooking  and  the  second  examination  exactly 
where  it  was  at  the  end  of  the  first.  Keflection  may 
change  the  content  of  the  moral  situation ;  it  may 
enrich  the  data  which  the  will  has  to  handle,  though 
it  may  also  impoverish  them  ;  it  may  give  the  problem 
a  form  more  favourable  for  action,  though  it  may  also 
do  the  contrary ;  but  at  the  end,  as  at  the  beginning, 
the  issue  remains  to  be  determined  otherwise  than  by 
reflection.  This  process  may  be  prolonged  to  infinity 
without  getting  one  hairsbreadth  nearer  to  the  essential 
moral  fact — the  action  of  the  will ;  this  being  always 
found  just  outside  the  boundary  which  abstract  moral 
science  has  reached.  Thus  the  problem  which  the  other 
sciences  handed  on  to  morality  is  in  turn  handed  back 
by  "moral"  science,  and  the  solution  of  the  problem 
is  no  nearer  at  the  end  than  it  was  at  the  beginning — 
often,  indeed,  it  is  much  further  off. 

Were  these  fresh  abstractions  undertaken  by  moral 
science  called  by  another  name — Social  Physiology,  for 
example — no  exception  could  be  taken  ;  but  by  calling 
them  "  moral  science "  hopes  are  raised  that  definite 
formulae  for  the  action  of  the  will  will  now  be  forth- 
coming analogous  to  those  provided  by  physics  and 
chemistry  in  their  respective  departments  —  in  other 
words,  that  moral  science  will  solve  the  moral  problem ; 
instead  of  which,  however,  the  moralist  merely  joins 
his  brother  scientists  in  putting  off  the  moral  problem 
to  another  occasion.  Thus  moral  science  might  be  not 
unfairly  described  as  the  science  which  evades  the 
moral  fact.  Hence  those  painful  chapters  found  at 
the  beginning  of  certain  text-books  in  which  the  writer 
may  be  seen  uneasily  adjusting  himself  to  his  subject ; 
hence  the  laboured  defence  of  his  scientific  character ; 


260  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

hence   the  caveat  that  all  particular  moral  problems 
must  be  relegated  to  a  hypothetical  department  called 
"  practical  ethics,"  which  the  writer  himself  is  careful 
not  to  touch,  leaving  it  to  those   who   are  willing   to 
imperil   their   souls   by   practising    the    black    art    of 
casuistry.      Hence  also   the   subsequent   discovery  by 
the  student  that  the   caveat   so   delivered  covers  the 
essential    moral    fact.      Just    as    Kant,   to    quote   our 
former   example,   setting   out  to    explain    the    object, 
caused   the   object   to  vanish   in  the   explanation  and 
had  to  admit  in  effect  that  the  only  real  object  was  the 
one  he  couldn't  explain,  so   our  moralists  often  leave 
us  with   the   conclusion   that  whatever  else  they  may 
be  talking  about  it  is  not  morality.     Morality  is  "  the 
thing-in-itself "   which    remains    over    when    the    last 
chapter  has  been  written.     For  may  we  not  say  that 
a  problem   is   moral   precisely  when,  and   because,   it 
cannot  be  solved   by  any  existing  scientific   rule,  but 
compels  us  to  make  a  rule  for  ourselves  and  to  make 
it  at  our  peril?     Had  men  all  along  restricted  them- 
selves to  the  performance  of  those   actions  for  which 
the  warrant  of  moral  science  was  then  and  there  avail- 
able, many  crimes  perhaps  would  not  have  been  com- 
mitted ;  but  it  is  doubtful  if  the  world  would  contain 
the  record  of  a  single  noble  deed. 

We  cannot  remind  ourselves  too  often  that  the  most 
complete  scientific  knowledge  of  what  has  been  done 
up  to  date  will  never  enable  us  to  answer  the  question, 
"  What  ought  to  be  done  next  ? "  The  thing  that  has- 
to-be-done  next  is  never  a  mere  copy  of  anything  that- 
has-been-done  ;  to  some  extent  it  is  always  a  new 
creation ;  the  "  newness  "  amounting  in  some  instances 
to  reversal  of  what  has  gone   before.     This   demand 


MORALITY   BY  THE   CARD  261 

for  something  new,  this  attack  upon  the  unknown, 
this  advance  into  the  uncharted  Hinterlands  of  hfe, 
is  precisely  what  gives  its  peculiar  character  to  the 
moral  situation.  Hence  it  is  that  even  if  a  complete 
map  were  before  us  of  all  human  actions  up  to  date, 
the  latitudes  and  longitudes  correctly  marked  and  the 
direction  of  every  current  and  the  date  of  every  wind 
given  on  the  margin,  the  information  thus  afforded 
would  always  stop  short  at  the  very  point  where  the 
moral  problem  begins.  The  subject-matter  of  science 
an(i  the  subject-matter  of  morality  are  entirely  different 
and  in  a  certain  sense  opposed :  the  first  is  the  deed-as- 
done,  the  second  the  doing  of  a  deed-to-be.  Between 
these  two  things  the  difference  is  so  great  that  to  consult 
astronomy  about  the  treatment  of  an  aneurism  would 
be  no  whit  more  absurd  than  to  expect  abstract  science 
of  any  kind  to  solve  the  moral  problem. 

Indeed  it  is  only  in  a  metaphorical  sense  that  the 
term  problem  can  be  applied  to  the  moral  situation 
at  all.  The  problems  of  the  will,  concerned  as  they 
are  with  what-is-to-be,  differ  so  entirely  from  the 
problems  of  science  concerning  what  is  and  has  been, 
that  the  direst  confusion  results  from  using  the  same 
word  for  the  two  things.  By  calling  the  moral  situa- 
tion a  "problem"  we  raise  once  more  the  vain  hope 
that  as  other  problems  are  severally  settled  by  the 
sciences  to  which  they  are  addressed,  so  there  is 
some  science  which  can  solve  in  the  same  demon- 
strative manner  the  problem  "  What  am  1  to  do  next  ? " 
But  between  this  latter  question  and  the  questions 
addressed  to  the  sciences  there  is  little  in  common 
beyond  the  bare  fact  that  both  are  put  in  the  inter- 
rogative form.     We  have  only^  to  note  the  differences 


262  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

which  go  along  with  this  mere  formal  resemblance  and 
we  realise  at  once  that  nothing  can  be  more  quixotic  than 
the  attempt  to  bring  human  conduct  under  the  rule  of 
scientific  formulae.  If  the  moral  situation  is  to  be  named 
a  problem  at  all,  let  us  remember  that  it  is  a  problem 
unamenable  by  its  very  nature  to  scientific  methods. 
Persisting,  as  so  many  of  us  do  persist,  in  the  opposite 
course ;  treating  the  moral  problem  in  the  same  class 
and  by  the  same  methods  as  the  others,  we  are  bound 
to  end  by  the  discovery  that  so  treated  our  question  is 
absolutely  insoluble.  Guided  by  conceptual  logic  alone 
we  are  inevitably  landed  in  moral  nescience,  and  our 
only  answer  to  the  question  "  What  am  I  to  do  next  ? " 
is  *' We  do  not  know;  therefore  do  nothing."  It  is  no 
unfair  thing  to  say  that  of  the  many  roads  that  lead 
to  ethical  Pyrrhonism  ethical  "  science "  provides  the 
shortest  cut. 

Here  a  passing  word  may  be  said  about  the  function 
of  books  as  instruments  of  teaching.  It  is  the  fashion 
of  this  age  to  assume  that  the  teacher  of  any  subject 
must  either  write  a  book  or  make  use  of  a  book  that 
has  been  written  by  somebody  else.  If  you  have  any- 
thing to  teach  you  "put  it  in"  a  book.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  you  cannot  "put  it  in"  a  book,  what 
more  proof  is  required  that  you  have  nothing  to 
teach  ?  Have  you  a  message  to  your  fellow-men  ? 
Produce  your  book.  Have  you  a  mission  to  your  age  ? 
Produce  your  book.  Or  are  you  repeating  the  message 
of  others  and  helping  to  carry  on  their  mission  ?  What 
books  do  you  use  —  Goethe's,  Carlyle's,  Browning's, 
Kant's,  Comte's,  Spencer's?     No  book,  no  message. 

In  making  this  requirement  the  fashion  of  our  age 
draws  inadequate  distinctions.     In  all  cases  alike  it  tends 


MORALITY   BY   THE   CARD  263 

to  look  upon  the  bookless  teacher  as  a  kind  of  contra- 
diction in  terms.  It  does  not,  of  course,  go  the  length 
of  asserting  that  every  man  who  writes  a  book  is  a 
prophet,  but  it  does  tend  to  the  belief  that  no  teacher 
of  what  is  new  ever  fails  to  write  a  book.  The  non- 
production  of  the  book  is  therefore  evidence  of  the 
non-existence  of  the  teaching.  Nor  does  the  weight  of 
this  evidence  vary  very  much  in  different  departments. 
It  is  generally  conclusive.  Whether  you  happen  to  be 
a  teacher  of  physical  science  or  of  ethics,  few  people 
will  believe  in  your  originality  till  you  have  written 
your  book.  Religion  remains,  perhaps,  a  doubtful 
exception:  here  the  bookless  prophet  is  still  tolerated 
within  limits.  But  claim  for  your  friend  that  he  has 
made  an  important  contribution  to  ethics  and  confess 
yourself  unable  to  name  any  book  in  which  the  con- 
tribution is  contained,  and  who  will  believe  you  ?  Who 
will  even  attach  a  meaning  to  your  words  ? 

Book-ridden  as  we  all  are,  it  is  extremely  difficult  for 
any  of  us  to  get  away  from  the  atmosphere  of  these 
ideas,  extremely  difficult  to  realise  that  all  this  is 
nothing  more  than  a  passing  state  of  the  spiritual 
weather.  The  result  of  liberating  oneself,  even  in 
imagination,  from  the  tyranny  of  books  is  so  startling, 
and  so  damaging  to  many  of  our  vested  interests,  that 
we  can  hardly  trust  ourselves  to  say  what  we  then 
think  and  feel.  But  making  an  effiart  just  for  once, 
we  can  easily  satisfy  ourselves  that  without  embarking 
on  any  foolish  tirade  against  books  in  general  we  can 
yet  draw  an  important  distinction  among  their  values 
as  instruments  of  teaching  in  the  various  departments 
of  life. 

Of  science  proper  we  may  say  that  books  are  its 


264  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

fitting  receptacles,  and  the  necessary  organs  of  its 
expression.  The  essential  features  of  science  may- 
be "put  into"  books  without  diminution  or  excess. 
Books  do  no  injustice  to  the  abstractions  of  science, 
to  its  statements  of  general  law.  Science  is  a  system 
of  organised  memoranda  which  are  recorded  and  multi- 
plied by  books  in  a  manner  which  leaves  nothing 
to  be  desired.  Considered  as  organs  of  expression  for 
the  purpose  in  view,  they  may  be  described  as  almost 
perfect — at  all  events,  the  best  we  have. 

When,  however,  we  turn  to  ethics  the  case  is 
different.  What  is  primary  in  the  moral  fact  can 
never  be  contained  in  nor  expressed  by  books,  but 
only  what  is  secondary.  Here  one  is  immediately 
struck  by  the  inadequacy  of  the  organ  of  expression 
to  the  thing  which  has  to  be  expressed.  Between 
the  adequacy  of  the  book  when  used  for  science 
and  its  inadequacy  for  ethics — which  we  contend  is 
no  science — there  is  a  startling  difference.  Everything 
that  is  characteristic  of  science  goes  submissively  into 
the  book  ;  everything  that  is  characteristic  of  the  Moral 
Fact — its  vitality,  its  creativeness,  its  splendour— flatly 
refuses  to  enter  in.  The  most  the  book  can  do  is  to 
touch,  nay,  to  indicate,  the  Moral  Fact  as  it  flies,  as  one 
might  point  to  an  eagle  in  the  clouds.  That  which 
expresses  ethical  truth  must  be  alive ;  and  lo !  every 
book  is  made  of  the  letter  that  killeth.  Of  every  sound 
ethical  system  one  may  say,  and  say  without  hesitation, 
that  it  is  precisely  that  sort  of  system  which  refuses  to 
go  into  a  book.  What  goes  into  the  book  may  be 
systematic  but  it  cannot  be  ethical.  And  contrariwise 
we  may  say  of  every  book  which  professes  to  contain  an 
ethical  system  that  it  is  not  sound.     It  is  in  regard  to 


MORALITY   BY   THE   CARD  265 

Morals  most  of  all  that  book-erudition  is  apt  to  become 
obstructive  and  to  illustrate  the  terrible  saying  that  "  the 
world  by  wisdom  knew  not  God."  Let  us  tear  the  veil 
for  one  instant  from  our  book-bewildered  eyes.  A 
"  Moral  Text-book "  is  not  the  essential  equipment  of 
a  moral  teacher.  Stowed  away  somewhere  with  the 
rest  of  his  impedimenta  it  may  come  in  useful  now 
and  then  ;  but  if  he  leans  upon  it  he  is  lost.  Nor  need 
we  be  greatly  daunted  when  the  world  denies  us  the 
credentials  of  moral  teachers  because  we  are  unable,  and 
confess  ourselves  unable,  to  write  our  moral  system  on 
a  sheet  of  paper,  to  hang  it  on  the  walls,  to  print  it  in 
a  book.  So  placed,  we  reply,  the  system  is  out  of  place  ; 
so  expressed  it  is  mis-expressed ;  so  used  it  is  abused. 
Fear  not  him,  therefore,  who  says  "  There  is  no  moral 
system  in  your  book."  Fear  him  rather  who  can  say 
"  There  is  no  moral  system  in  your  life."  By  nothing 
short  of  the  Good-will  can  the  Good-will  be  expressed. 
Morals  have  no  language  short  of  personality,  and  that, 
we  venture  to  think,  in  spite  of  the  overwhelming 
prejudice  of  this  book-ridden  age,  can  never  be  re- 
translated into  the  language  of  any  book. 

On  these  grounds,  then,  we  plead  for  the  man  who, 
at  the  present  day,  declines  to  put  his  moral  system 
into  a  book.  For  our  own  part  we  would  as  soon  try 
to  put  it  into  a  bottle.  It  remains  to  point  out,  how- 
ever, that  the  person  who  renounces  this  attempt  does 
not  become  thereby  of  no  account  in  the  service  of 
morality.  Condemned  for  his  want  of  the  recognised 
credentials  he  may  be ;  but  there  are  analogies  from 
a  closely  related  sphere  which  may  enable  him  to 
take  his  condemnation  standing  up.  Pheidias,  Titian, 
Beethoven,  Turner,  and  others  too  numerous  to  name. 


THE  ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

did  great  things  in  the  world  of  Art,  by  which  they 
have  helped,  enriched,  and  permanently  lifted  up  the 
Ufe  of  man.  But  none  of  them  put  his  work  in  a 
book.  Other  men  have  tried  to  do  this  for  them — 
with  doubtful  success.  There  is,  it  is  true,  a  putative 
Science  of  Art  (^Esthetic)  to  which  great  artists  like 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  occasionally  make  a  contribution, 
though  by  most  of  them  it  is  not  unhappily  ignored. 
Nobody  contends  that  this  science  is  the  backbone  of 
Art.  Nobody  makes  it  the  basis  of  the  artist's  educa- 
tion. That  it  helps  in  maintaining  a  certain  dull 
mediocrity  of  performance  need  not  be  denied ;  at  the 
same  time  it  may  repress  originality,  and,  if  greatly 
emphasised,  would  undoubtedly  have  this  effect.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that  no  man's  service  to  the  cause  of  Art  is 
to  be  measured  by  the  amount  of  his  contribution  to 
this  science.  May  we  not  ask  to  be  put  on  the  same 
footing  in  regard  to  morality?  Believing  as  we  do 
that  conduct  is  essentially  a  Fine  Art,  is  it  too  much 
to  claim  that  no  man  can  live  the  Good  Life  without 
a  touch  of  genius  ?  And  may  it  not  be  that  this  kind 
of  genius  is  the  common  possession  of  all  men  to  a 
degree  which  we  are  only  prevented  from  acknowledg- 
ing by  our  scientific  obsessions  ?  Is  it  not  possible  that 
the  moral  genius  of  men  is  being  repressed,  as  well  as 
ignored,  by  all  those  obstinate  mental  habits  of  ours 
which  thrust  the  scientific  character  of  morality  to  the 
front,  which  compel  others  to  think  of  it  scientifically, 
and  which  lead  us,  with  highly  questionable  wisdom,  to 
force  it  in  the  scientific  form  down  the  helpless  throats 
of  the  young  ?  Would  not  a  parallel  procedure  in  Art 
be  the  death  of  all  great  performance  ?  Is  it  inconceiv- 
able that  what  morality  needs  most  at  the  present  day 


MORALITY   BY   THE   CARD  267 

is  a  just  measure  of  contempt  for  all  systems  that  are 
merely  "in  books" ;  the  moral  decadence  we  see  around 
us  being  due  in  no  small  measure  to  that  very  standard 
which  would  condemn  us  as  incompetent  because  of 
our  confessed,  nay,  our  boasted,  failure  in  this  respect  ? 
To  those  who  deny  these  possibilities  we  can  only 
repeat  the  words  of  Cromwell  to  the  Scotch  divines  : 
**  I  beseech  you  in  the  bowels  of  Christ,  think  it  possible 
that  ye  may  be  mistaken." 

But  morality  by  the  card,  even  though  it  be  a  con- 
tradiction in  terms,  may  have  its  uses ;  and  there 
is  no  denying  that  a  purpose  is  served  by  verbal 
treatment  of  the  Moral  Fact,  whether  by  precept, 
exhortation,  or  philosophical  discourse.  Perhaps  we 
shall  not  greatly  err  in  construing  .its  value  to  the 
moral  life  as  that  of  a  tonic,  but  not  of  a  food.  Taken 
in  excessive  doses,  or  used  in  place  of  food,  such 
morality  is  a  deadly  poison.  One  may  even  hazard  a 
guess  that  many  of  us  who  know,  or  think  we  know, 
a  great  deal  about  morality  are  actually  taking  the 
tonic  in  poisonous  quantities.  Fortunately  the  taste 
for  it  is  acquired  ;  to  the  unspoiled  palate  of  youth 
it  is  nauseous — and  for  that  we  may  be  thankful. 

Nor  must  we  overlook  that  well-worn  and  highly 
respectable  argument  which  regards  the  Law  as  a 
schoolmaster  leading  us  on  to  something  higher.  The 
use  of  precept,  we  are  told,  is  in  conducting  the  pupil 
to  the  point  at  which  his  moral  originality  will  break 
out  into  its  own  forms,  without  which  propaedeutic  of 
the  Law,  conscience  would  never  pass  under  the  rule  of 
any  principle  higher  than  Law. 

But  it  makes  a  great  difference  whether  we  regard 
this  view  as  the  statement  of  an  historical  fact  or  as  the 


THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

proposal  of  a  working  policy.  As  historical  fact  it  is 
true  beyond  question ;  as  working  policy  it  is  highly 
dangerous. 

By  St  Paul  it  was  propounded  as  historical  fact,  not 
as  working  policy.  St  Paul  stated  that  the  Law  had 
been  a  necessary  preparation  for  the  Gospel  in  the 
past;  he  did  not  propose  that  the  same  order  should 
be  maintained  in  the  future.  His  working  policy  for 
human  education  henceforth  was  not  first  a  course  of 
the  Law  and  then  a  course  of  Christianity — but  Chris- 
tianity straight  away  for  every  man. 

St  Paul  showed  himself  wiser  than  some  of  his  would- 
be  imitators  in  our  own  time.  One  more  curious 
instance  is  here  supplied  of  the  way  in  which  the 
wisdom  of  the  wise  confounds  itself  None  so  slow  as 
the  wise  in  observing  that  the  value  of  a  fact  may  be 
completely  altered  by  the  very  explanation  they  give  of 
its  meaning.  It  is  so  in  the  present  instance.  There 
was  a  time  when  the  Jews  thought  the  Law  was  final 
and  its  power  over  the  will  lay  in  its  assumed  finality ; 
it  was  reverenced  and  obeyed  accordingly.  Then  came 
the  discovery  of  its  temporary  character — the  secret 
escaped  that  it  was  only  a  schoolmaster.  Henceforth, 
therefore,  the  Law  is  not  merely  a  temporary  expedi- 
ent, but  a  temporary  expedient  known  to  be  such. 
That  makes  all  the  difference  —  a  difference  which 
deprives  the  Law  of  the  authority  it  had  over  the 
will  in  the  times  when  we  knew  not  that  it  was  a 
schoolmaster,  but  thought  it  final.  If,  therefore,  we 
are  to  maintain  the  function  of  the  Law  as  a  propaedeutic 
we  must  carefully  conceal  the  truth  that  it  is  only  this ; 
we  must  encourage  the  pupil  to  think  of  it  as  final,  even 
as  the  Jews  did  of  old.     That  is  difficult,  not  to  say 


MORALITY   BY   THE   CARD 

dangerous.  The  Law  found  out  to  be  a  temporary- 
expedient  is  obviously  a  very  inferior  kind  of  propae- 
deutic compared  with  the  Law  thought  to  be  final,  and 
there  is  no  doubt  that  concealment  of  the  true  state  of 
the  case  is  essential  if  the  power  of  this  propasdeutic  is 
to  be  kept  up  to  its  former  level.  But  how  conceal  it  ? 
Children,  of  course,  need  not  know — perhaps  they  could 
not  understand.  So  far  so  good.  But  what  about  the 
teacher  ?  He  presumably  knows.  And  is  moral  teach- 
ing on  those  terms  likely  to  succeed  ?  Must  there  not 
be  of  necessity  an  element  of  make-believe  in  the 
attitude  of  the  teacher  towards  his  subject  which  is 
likely  in  the  long-run  to  take  the  heart  out  of  his  busi- 
ness ?  Certainly  the  teacher,  possessed  of  the  school- 
master-secret, is  making  a  great  mistake  if  he  thinks  he 
is  repeating  the  conditions  under  which  the  Law  was 
taught  and  reverenced  in  ancient  Israel.  To  say  the 
least  of  it,  he  is  working  in  a  very  different  atmosphere 
— an  atmosphere  wholly  uncongenial  to  the  project  he 
has  in  hand.  May  he  not  be  reasonably  asked  to  be 
extremely  cautious,  and  to  earnestly  consider  whether 
he  is  not  preparing  the  way  for  a  grave  moral  disaster  ? 
Nor  must  he  suppose  that  he  has  a  warrant  from 
St  Paul.  Nothing,  we  imagine,  could  have  been  more 
abhorrent  to  the  mind  of  this  great  moral  genius 
than  the  notion  of  making  history  repeat  itself  by  a 
forced  reproduction  of  the  two  stages  in  the  past  moral 
history  of  the  Jews.  Such  a  proceeding  would  have 
appeared  to  him  profane.  "  The  times  of  that  ignorance 
God  winked  at."  But  God  can  hardly  be  expected  to 
wink  at  this. 


XII.— THE  QUEST  FOR  SAFE-CONDUCT 

In  the  science  of  Political  Economy  a  gradual  revolu- 
tion has  been  brought  about  by  increased  attention 
given  to  the  interests  of  the  Consumer,  When  wealth 
is  studied  exclusively  from  the  point  of  viev^  of  those 
engaged  in  its  production,  or  when  the  economic  agent 
is  treated  as  producer  only  and  not  consumer  as  well, 
we  end  in  some  purely  abstract  result  for  which  no 
place  can  be  found  in  the  actual  economy  of  the  world. 
The  early  periods  of  economic  theory  were  marked, 
as  is  well  known,  by  this  one-sided  emphasis  on  the 
interests  of  the  producer,  and  it  was  in  consequence  of 
the  results  so  reached  that  Political  Economy  earned 
the  name  of  the  Dismal  Science.  Later  on,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  rule  that  obvious  truths  are  the  last  to  be 
considered,  economists  began  to  discuss  the  importance 
of  consumption  ;  and  by  constructing  their  science  more 
and  more  and  more  from  the  consumer's  point  of  view 
they  reversed,  or  greatly  modified,  the  conclusions  of 
their  predecessors,  presenting  these  in  such  a  form  that 
they  could  no  longer  be  fairly  described  as  showing 
"  how  the  rich  become  richer  and  the  poor  poorer." 

The  revolution  which  has  been  thus  happily  accom- 
plished or  set  forward,  in  Political  Economy,  is  much 
less  advanced  on  the  field  of  ethics  ;  in  some  quarters  it 
has  scarcely  begun.     But  here  also  it  is  obvious  that 

270 


THE   QUEST  FOR  SAFE-CONDUCT  271 

man  lives  his  life  not  merely  in  producing  actions  of 
his  own,  but,  so  to  say,  in  "consuming"  the  results 
of  actions  done  by  other  people,  as  well  as  by  himself. 
His  interests  as  ethical  producer  are  equalled  if  not 
outranked  in  importance  by  his  interests  as  ethical  con- 
sumer, i.e,  as  the  recipient  of  other  men's  offices,  the 
patient  of  their  deeds,  the  re-acting  object  of  their  wills. 
And  it  is  not  often  that  one  encounters  a  treatise  on 
morals  in  which  man's  interests  as  Ethical  Consumer 
are  adequately  recognised.^  On  the  other  hand,  there 
are  many  in  which  Morality  is  considered  exclusively, 
or  almost  exclusively,  from  the  Producer's  end.  Surely 
Ethics  so  studied  is  the  most  "  dismal "  of  the  sciences. 

There  is  a  story  about  David  which  illustrates  the 
change  in  an  ethical  situation  when  the  Consumer's 
interest  comes  into  play.  We  read  that  David,  in  the 
midst  of  a  campaign,  cried  out  one  day,  "  O  that  I 
might  drink  of  the  well  of  Bethlehem  that  is  by  the 
gate."  The  cry  was  overheard,  and  three  daring  fellows 
resolved  that  the  chief  should  have  his  wish.  At  the 
risk  of  their  lives  they  brake  through  the  host  of  the 
Philistines,  got  the  water,  and  brought  it  to  David. 
But  David  would  not  drink  it.  "  God  forbid,"  says  he, 
"  that  I  should  drink  it.  This  is  the  blood  of  the  three 
mighty  men  who  went  in  jeopardy  of  their  lives."  So 
David  poured  it  out  unto  the  Lord. 

And  alongside  of  this  one  can  hardly  refrain  from 
recalling  the  well-worn  story  about  Sir  Philip  Sidney 
and  the  wounded  soldier  on  the  field  of  Zutphen.  It  is 
characteristic  of  our  one-sided  ethics  that  this  story  is 
almost  invariably  introduced  as  an  illustration  of  the 

1  They  are  recognised — perhaps  over-emphasised — in  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount.     But  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  not  a  treatise. 


272  THE   ALCHEMY  OF  THOUGHT 

magnanimity  of  Sidney.  But  the  present  writer  well 
remembers  the  startled  look  on  the  face  of  a  certain 
venerable  person  when,  having  told  this  story  to  his 
class  and  asked  them  what  they  thought  of  it,  a  spirited 
little  figure  sprang  to  its  feet  in  the  middle  of  the  room 
and  cried  out,  "  The  fellow  who  took  the  water  was  a 
cad."     Once  more  it  was  the  consumer's  point  of  view. 

Perhaps  the  highest  duty  we  owe  to  "  others  "  is  to 
remember  what  kind  of  "  others  "  they  are,  viz.  that 
they  are  other  men,  other  wills,  other  self-conscious  beings ; 
not  mere  "  others,"  empty,  abstract,  passive,  dead ;  not 
tesserae  to  be  arranged  in  a  mosaic  of  our  contriving  ; 
not  open  mouths  waiting  to  swallow  our  wonder- 
working dose.  A  political  cartoon  recently  exhibited 
seemed  to  show  that  the  artist  had  been  pondering 
this  aspect  of  the  moral  life.  The  cartoon  represented 
a  veterinary  surgeon  in  the  act  of  administering  a  pill 
to  a  horse  by  the  method  of  blowing  it  through  a 
tube  down  the  animal's  throat.  But  unfortunately 
the  horse  blew  first. 

This  may  serve  to  remind  us  of  a  besetting  danger. 
I  refer  to  the  ease  with  which  we  may  overlook  the  truth 
that  the  moral  relation  is  never  to  be  understood  by 
considering  the  action  of  a  self-contained  or  isolated 
will  operating  in  vacuo.  The  moral  fact  is  constituted 
by  the  action  and  reaction  of  a  pluraUty  of  wills  ;  and 
until  we  consider  it  in  that  character  we  do  not  so 
much  as  enter  the  province  of  morality.  My  decision 
to  do  my  neighbour  good  is  never  the  end  of  the 
matter ;  nothing  can  happen  until  his  will  consents  to 
my  decision  by  accepting  the  good  I  offer  him.  The 
verdict  of  my  conscience  that  I  ought  to  give  him  a 


THE   QUEST  FOR  SAFE-CONDUCT  273 

sovereign  in  no  way  binds  his  conscience  to  affirm  that 

he  ought  to  receive  a  sovereign  from  me.     Until  his 

will  and  mine  are  at  one  in  the  matter  nothing  can  be 

done. 

It  is  no  uncommon  thing,  for  example,  to  find  the 

virtue  of  Benevolence  discussed  with  reference  only  to 

one  side  of  the  benevolent  transaction.     In  order  that 

Benevolence  may  have  free  course,  some  writers  seem 

to  assume  the  existence  of  a  sufficient  number  of  persons 

whose  office  is  that  of  lay  figures  or  blocks.     That  A 

may  have  the  conditions  he  needs  for  the  practice  of  this 

virtue,  B  and  C  must  consent  to  be  his  targets,  they 

must  stand  up  to  be  shot  at  by  A's  benevolent  gun. 

Until  B  and  C  consent  to  be  so  treated,  A  cannot  get 

to  business.     But  will   B   and  C   consent  ?     Or,  what 

is  far  more  important,  ought  they  to  consent  ?     How 

will  their  reputation   for   Benevolence  be   affected   by 

lending    themselves    too    readily   as    objects    for   A's 

benevolent    designs  ?       These     questions    are    seldom 

asked  with  sufficient  emphasis,  and  it  is  with  no  little 

shock   of    surprise    that  the   student    notes    the    ease 

with  which  they  are  sometimes  passed  over  altogether. 

Again  and  again  an  argument  is  presented  for  making 

the  happiness  or  well-being   of  "others"   the   end   of 

my  actions  ;   little  heed  being  given   to  the  fact  that 

the  very  arguments  which  require  me  to  seek  the  good 

of  "others"   would,   in   many   instances,  forbid    these 

"  others "   to  suffer   their   good  to  be   sought  by  me. 

These  unfortunate   "  others  "   are  apparently  all  dead, 

or,  at  all  events,  not  sufficiently  alive  to  cry  out,  as 

any  man   of  honour  would,  "  Stop  there,  my  friend ! 

Many  thanks  for  your  benevolent   desire  to    sacrifice 

yourself  in  my  behalf.     But  before  heaven,  and  in  the 

18 


«74  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

name  of  your  own  principles,  you   shall  do  no  such 
thing  !  " 

It  is  to  the  habit  of  overlooking  the  reciprocity  of 
ethical  relations,  through  failing  to  give  the  "others" 
their  full  value  as  self-conscious  agents,  that  we  must 
attribute  the  hopeless  deadlock  which  seems  to  be  the 
result  of  so  much  ethical  discussion.  Standing  at  one 
end  of  the  moral  relation  the  thinker  vaguely  feels  at 
the  other  end  the  presence  of  a  factor  whose  influence 
cannot  be  gauged,  and  is  compelled  in  consequence  to 
hold  his  conclusions  subject  to  reversal  by  that  of  which 
he  cannot  take  account.  Perpetual  hesitation  is  the 
result.  For  example,  if  any  person,  anxious  to  guide 
his  steps  aright  in  the  matter  of  Benevolence,  should 
turn  to  the  chapter  in  Mr  Sidgwick's  Methods  of  Ethics'^ 
in  which  this  virtue  is  discussed,  he  will  be  bitterly 
disappointed.  With  all  the  respect  due  to  this 
great  moralist  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the 
effect  of  this  chapter  is  to  add  enormously  to  the 
difficulties  of  practising  Benevolence.  Assuredly  it  is 
a  good  thing  to  pause  and  think  over  what  you  are 
doing;  but  it  is  an  extremely  bad  thing  when  the 
process  of  reflection  is  so  indecisive  that  the  "  pause  " 
extends  itself  beyond  the  opportunity  for  action  and 
becomes  practically  endless,  as  it  always  must  be  in  the 
presence  of  an  incalculable  factor  at  the  other  end  of 
the  line.  Nothing,  indeed,  is  so  destructive  of  morality 
as  an  attitude  of  reflective  pause  indefinitely  prolonged  ; 
and  such  an  attitude,  we  cannot  refrain  from  thinking, 
is  the  most  likely  result  of  attempting  to  solve  the 
"problem"  of  Benevolence  (or  any  particular  virtue) 
by    such    methods    as    Mr    Sidgwick    here    employs. 

1  Methods  of  Ethics,  Book  III.,  Chap.  IV. 


THE   QUEST  FOR  SAFE-CONDUCT  275 

What  we  are  promised,  and  led  to  hope  for,  is 
guiding  principles ;  what  we  really  receive  is  added 
perplexities ;  and  these  are  piled  up  to  a  degree  which 
threatens  a  total  paralysis  of  the  will.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  reader's  hopes  are  continually  raised  by 
such  a  proposal  as  this,  "  We  have  therefore  to  in- 
quire on  what  principle  these  [duties]  can  be  deter- 
mined "  (p.  255) ;  on  the  other,  they  are  continually 
dashed  by  the  statement,  "  It  seems  that  delicate 
questions  of  this  kind  are  more  naturally  referred  to 
canons  of  good  taste  and  refined  feeling  than  of  morality 
proper "  (p.  257) ;  or,  *'  Something  between  the  two 
seems  to  suit  our  moral  taste ;  but  I  find  no  self- 
evident  principle  upon  which  the  amount  can  be  de- 
cided " ;  or,  "  Here,  again,  there  seems  a  doubt  how 
far  this  feeling  ought  to  be  fostered " ;  and  finally, 
"We  must  admit  that  while  we  find  a  number  of 
broad  and  more  or  less  indefinite  rules  unhesitatingly 
laid  down  by  Common  Sense  in  this  department  of 
Duty,  it  is  difficult  or  impossible  to  extract  from  them, 
so  far  as  they  are  commonly  accepted,  any  clear  or 
precise  principles  for  determining  the  extent  of  the 
duty  in  any  case."  ^ 

There  need  be  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  this  kind 
of  thing,  which  is  typical  of  what  one  may  find  in  many 
ethical  treatises,  is  apt  to  be  demoralising.  Were  it 
offered  by  way  of  suggesting  that  what  is  called  the 
moral   "problem"   is   not   a   problem   in  the  ordinary 

^  In  justice  to  Mr  Sidgwick  it  must  be  stated  that  in  this  chapter 
it  is  not  always  easy  to  say  whether  he  is  stating  his  own  views  or 
criticising  views  held  by  other  people.  But  there  is  nothing  in  other 
portions  of  the  book  to  help  us  further  with  the  '^problems  "  here  left 
unsolved. 


276  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

sense  of  the  term,  and  is  obstinately  insoluble  by  the 
methods  to  which  other  problems  yield,  then  it  might 
be  welcomed ;  but  offered  as  an  aid  to  the  solution  of 
our  moral  difficulties,  it  can  only  be  described  as  falling 
disastrously  wide  of  the  mark ;  for  it  misses  the  goal 
of  the  intellect  and  strikes  the  will  with  a  paralysing 
blow.  If  the  reader  attentively  considers  he  will  find 
that  his  moral  difficulties  invariably  begin  at  the  very 
point  where  this  hesitating  and  indecisive  analysis 
leaves  off;  that  what  these  thinkers  call  "morality 
proper  "  is  not  morahty  at  all ;  whereas  what  they  hand 
over  to  the  "  canons  of  good  taste  and  refined  feeling  " 
is  precisely  that  moral  difficulty  which  the  reader  is 
asking  them  to  resolve.  Were  one  reduced  to  the 
simple  alternative  of  having  to  decide  a  course  of  action 
either  by  the  method  of  reflective  pause  required  for 
Mr  Sidgwick's  analysis  or  by  prompt  and  unreflective 
appeal  to  instinctive  feelings  of  "good  taste,"  there 
cannot  be  a  doubt  that  it  would  be  well  to  choose  the 
latter.  For  whatever  mistakes  might  result  from  the 
latter  method,  persistence  in  the  former  would  involve 
the  destruction  of  the  will. 

At  the  threshold  of  ethics  stands  the  truth  that  the 
moral  situation  is  constituted  not  by  the  action  of  a 
single  will  but  by  the  action  and  reaction  of  many. 
"  Solving  a  moral  problem  "  means,  if  it  means  anything, 
arriving  at  a  just  estimate  of  the  results  of  action — no 
matter  whether  those  results  are  measured  in  terms  of 
Happiness,  Moral  Perfection,  Self-realisation,  Peace  of 
Conscience,  or  what  not.  And  it  is  obvious  that  the 
only  intelligence  which  could  solve  the  problem  in  that 
sense — the  only  sense  in  which  the  word  "problem" 


THE   QUEST  FOR  SAFE-CONDUCT  277 

is  strictly  used — would  be  an  intelligence  which  had 
access  to  all  the  minds  and  all  the  wills  involved  in 
the  transaction.  Undertaken,  therefore,  by  any  merely 
finite  intelligence,  such  an  attempt  is  condemned  to 
failure  from  the  outset.  To  study  the  action  of  an 
isolated  will  and  apply  the  results  so  obtained  as  de- 
termining what  will  or  will  not  happen,  what  ought  or 
ought  not  to  happen,  in  the  co-operating  system  of  all 
the  wills  involved,  is  the  sheerest  fatuity.  We  are  here 
dealing  wdth  a  type  of  action  which,  as  previously 
pointed  out,  differs  essentially  from  the  action  which 
physical  science  handles  in  the  field  of  inanimate  Nature  ; 
the  difference  being  that  whereas  the  forces  of  Nature 
are  determined,  and  act  therefore  under  laws  considered 
as  already  made,  the  forces  of  the  will,  being  self- 
determined,  act  under  laws  which  are  to  be  made  in 
and  by  the  action  which  is  taking  place.  Hence  the 
notion  of  "solubility"  as  applied  to  the  problems  of 
physical  science  is  utterly  out  of  place  when  applied 
to  the  "problems"  of  morality,  and  the  search  for  a 
"  solution  "  of  that  kind  is  perhaps  the  vainest  enterprise 
ever  undertaken  by  the  intelligence  of  man.  Unless 
we  suppose  in  ourselves  some  faculty  which  reflects 
the  knowledge  and  the  counsels  of  Omniscience,  the 
attempt  to  solve  moral  "  problems  "  in  this  way  must 
be  frankly  given  up.  Tentative,  risky,  probable  answers 
may,  and  are,  obtainable  by  intellectual  methods ;  but 
to  parade  these  as  scientific  "solutions"  is  certainly 
misleading.  It  were  far  better  to  confess  from  the 
outset  what  has  to  be  confessed  in  the  long-run — e.g,, 
by  Mr  Sidgwick's  appeal  to  "  the  canons  of  good  taste 
and  refined  feeling" — that  the  moral  character  which 
attaches  to   the   problems   of  the   will  involves   their 


278  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

insolubility  by  the  methods  of  the  intellect.  A  moral 
problem  might  be  defined  as  a  problem  handed  over 
to  the  rational  will  for  a  kind  of  solution  which  the 
scientific  intellect  is  incompetent  to  provide.  Until, 
therefore,  the  problem  has  passed  out  of  the  hands  of 
formal  science,  it  is  not  a  moral  problem. 

When  once  this  transference  has  been  effected  it 
cannot  be  undone.  Its  consequences  must  be  accepted. 
Among  these  is  the  impossibility  of  producing  any  kind 
of  logical  rule  of  thumb  for  defining  moral  distinctions 
— for  separating  the  sheep  from  the  goats.  In  admitting 
the  problem  as  moral  the  intellect  has  also  admitted  its 
own  incapacity  to  provide  a  "  solution,"  and  all  attempts 
to  go  back  on  this  admission  serve  merely  to  embroil 
us  deeper  in  the  Sidgwickian  bewilderment  and  to  dis- 
qualify the  w^ill  for  playing  its  part.  Plausible  as  are 
the  reasons  which  urge  reflection  on  the  moral  issue, 
we  cannot  remind  ourselves  too  often  that  the  process 
of  reflection,  no  matter  how  prolonged,  will  never  effect 
the  conclusion  of  the  moral  business ;  will  never  dis- 
charge us  from  facing  that  difficult  moment  when  the 
will  must  act,  and  take  the  risk.  To  overlook  this — to 
overlook  it  to  the  extent  of  letting  our  moral  interest 
become  absorbed  in  reflection  on  moral  issues — is  to 
cultivate  weakness  of  character,  which,  after  all,  is  only 
another  name  for  immorality.  Sooner  or  later  an  intel- 
lectual risk  will  have  to  be  faced,  and  it  is  better  to  face 
it  too  early  than  not  to  face  it  at  all.  Paradoxical  as  it 
may  sound,  the  safest  policy  in  morals  is  to  face  your 
danger,  and  the  most  dangerous  is  to  run  away  from  it. 
"  Skulkers,"  said  one  of  Nelson's  captains,  "  always  get 
the  worst  of  it " ;  and  it  may  be  truly  said  that  the 
greatest  mistakes  in  conduct  are  made  by  those  persons 


THE  QUEST  FOR  SAFE-CONDUCT  279 

who  hope  by  means  of  pondering  on  the  event  to  find 
some  course,  or  some  corner,  where  they  will  be  demon- 
strably safe.  Where  a  genuine  moral  issue  is  involved, 
no  such  course,  no  such  corner,  can  be  found.  The 
conception  of  the  will  as  having  nothing  to  do  but  to 
travel  in  first-class  comfort  towards  points  marked  out 
in  advance,  and  along  roads  securely  engineered,  by  the 
intellect,  is  of  course  a  contradiction  in  terms,  depriving 
the  will  of  every  quality  which  makes  it  what  it  is.  In 
a  world  where  all  moral  courses  were  thus  plotted  out 
in  advance  like  the  lines  on  a  railway  map  it  is  hard  to 
see  how  what  we  call  morality  could  exist.  And  though 
the  holders  of  this  view  will  always  be  taunted,  perhaps 
condemned,  for  their  inabiUty  to  produce  a  rule  of 
thumb  for  moral  distinctions,  they  may  nevertheless 
console  themselves  by  reflecting  that  their  opponents 
are  in  the  same  condition  as  themselves.  Contend  as 
these  may  that  an  indisputable  rule  is  forthcoming,  they 
have  not  produced  it,  and  there  are  good  reasons  for 
believing  they  never  will. 

Those  to  whom  the  conviction  has  come  that  the 
universe  itself  is  something  other  than  an  intellectual 
problem  will  not  be  troubled  by  these  taunts.  They 
will  see  no  reason  why  in  such  a  world  they  should 
force  themselves  to  make  a  "  problem,"  and  nothing  but 
a  "  problem,"  of  their  own  lives.  Moreover,  the  actual 
results  of  excessive  devotion  to  the  problem-fetish  are 
even  less  encouraging  on  the  field  of  morality  than  they 
are  elsewhere ;  at  least  they  are  by  no  means  such  as 
to  suggest  that  the  devotees  are  worshipping  the  true 
God.  Morality,  so  far  as  observation  goes,  gains 
singularly  little  by  these  exercises.  Their  fruits  are 
vacillation   and   weakness   of  character.     Just    as   the 


280  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

artist,  waiting  for  a  rule  of  thumb  which  is  to  guide 
him  in  the  creation  of  a  successful  work  of  art,  pro- 
duces no  art,  so  the  Will,  waiting  for  a  scientific  canon 
of  moral  distinction,  does  no  Good,  At  most  it  refrains 
from  doing  harm. 

All  attempts  to  escape  from  the  intellectual  difficulties 
of  the  Moral  Life  are,  ultimately,  attempts  to  escape  from 
the  Moral  Life  itself.  These  attempts  take  the  form  of 
a  search  for  some  final  authority  which  by  declaring 
infallibly  what  ought  to  be  done  provides  the  will  with 
an  indefeasible  safe-conduct  through  all  perplexities 
and  dangers.  It  makes  little  difference  to  the  value  of 
this  safe-conduct  whether,  in  the  last  resort,  it  be 
countersigned  by  Church,  Bible,  Exact  Science  or 
Conscience.  Its  supposed  value  lies  in  its  demonstrative 
certainty,  and  so  long  as  it  carries  this  on  its  face,  the 
particular  origin  of  the  certainty  is  a  matter  of  secondary 
importance. 

It  is  not  possible  to  discuss  here  the  various  forms  of 
authoritative  guidance  thus  offered.  In  what  remains 
to  be  said  we  confine  ourselves  to  that  form  of 
Authority  which  is  claimed  for  the  individual  con- 
science. In  principle  it  is  typical  of  them  all,  and  it  is 
only  as  typical  that  it  is  here  discussed. 

If  Authority  means  any  kind  of  inerrant  legislation 
which  gives  us  definite  and  detailed  guidance  as  to 
what  is  and  what  is  not  our  duty  to  do  in  specific  cases, 
then  for  reasons  already  given  the  quest  for  that 
authority  is  necessarily  vain  from  the  nature  of  the 
case.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  reference  is  made  to  some 
entirely  general  proposition,  as  that  all  actions  are 
subject  to  the  law  of  right,  or  that  Duty  is  supreme, 
then  indeed  there  is  no  serious  objection  to  our  saying 


THE   QUEST  FOR  SAFE-CONDUCT  281 

that  such  universal  truths  have  supreme  authority  over 
the  human  will.  But  though  this,  or  something  very- 
like  it,  was  the  view  held  by  Kant  and  his  successors, 
it  bears  little  resemblance  to  the  current  intuitionist 
theory  of  an  authoritative  conscience.  According  to 
this,  the  intuitions  of  the  conscience  are  definite  ad  hoc 
pronouncements,  not  in  the  universal  form  that  duty 
must  be  done,  but  in  the  particular  form  which  declares 
this  and  not  that  to  be  your  duty  and  straightway 
enjoins  you  to  do  it.  Further,  these  ad  hoc  pronounce- 
ments of  the  conscience — do  this,  don't  do  that — are  to 
be  regarded  (if  only  you  can  get  them)  as  infallible  in 
precisely  the  same  sense  as  the  Vatican  decrees  are 
regarded  as  infallible  by  the  devout  Romanist.  They 
represent  the  voice  of  God  speaking  in  the  soul,  and 
as  such  are  to  be  accepted  with  unreserved  submission. 
Morality  is  just  the  life  of  submission  to  this  divine 
voice,  and  we  must  submit  to  it  without  reserve  just 
because  it  is]  divine.  In  this  respect  the  final  attitude 
demanded  of  the  soul  is  the  same  whether  we  take  for 
our  guide  Luther,  Newman,  Martineau ;  it  is  the 
attitude  of  absolute  obedience  to  an  indefeasible 
authority.  Taking  this  theory  as  a  whole  I  do  not 
think  it  possible  that  it  should  mean  anything  less  than 
this :  viz.  that  each  man  carries  in  his  breast  a  divine 
oracle  revealing  to  him,  with  infallible  authority,  the 
right  and  the  wrong  of  every  crisis  his  will  has  to  face. 
Just  because  that  oracle  is  divine  we  can,  in  obeying 
its  commands,  make  no  mistakes.^ 

1  Martineau  fully  admits  the  difficulty  of  extracting  a  clear  pronounce- 
ment from  this  oracle  in  concrete  cases^  and  proposes  a  method  for  dealing 
with  complications.  But  when  once  the  pronouncement  is  extracted  it  is 
to  be  regarded  as  oracular.     See  Types  oj  Ethical  Theory ,  ii.  p.  255,  ed.  1. 


282  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

We  need  not  linger  over  the  host  of  objections 
that  have  been  brought  against  this  theory.  Many 
of  them  have  been  valiantly  met  by  its  defenders. 
Chief  among  them  is,  of  course,  the  obvious  diffi- 
culty of  accepting  the  conscience  as  the  voice  of 
God  in  face  of  the  extraordinary  diversity  and  con- 
flict of  judgments  to  which  it  gives  rise.  This  is 
a  difficulty  which  can  be  met ;  though,  in  order  to 
do  so,  a  monistic  conception  of  the  universe  seems  to 
be  required. 

More  serious,  however,  is  the  difficulty  which  arises 
from  a  fact  already  noted.  There  is  a  large  class  of 
actions,  by  far  the  most  significant  with  which  conscience 
has  to  deal,  which  cannot  be  performed  by  any  single  will, 
but  require  the  co-operation  of  several.  This  is  the  case, 
broadly  speaking,  with  the  whole  class  of  our  duties  to 
one  another.  My  will  cannot  do  its  duty  by  you 
(except  when  you  are  helpless)  unless  your  will  is  a 
consenting  party.  My  act  in  rendering  you  a  service  is 
apt  to  appear  as  unitary  and  entirely  under  my  control. 
But  the  act  is  really  double,  and  is  no  more  under 
my  control  than  it  is  under  yours.  Unless  you  take 
I  cannot  give,  and  your  taking  is  as  essential  to  the 
completion  of  the  act  as  my  giving.  Nor  can  the 
significance  of  this  be  turned  aside  by  referring  to  the 
motives  involved.  In  all  such  cases  our  moral  concern 
is  with  the  whole  opus  operatum,  and  there  can  be  no 
opus  operatum  unless  your  will  co-operates  with  mine. 
What  I  will  is  not  that  a  certain  benevolent  motive 
shall  express  itself  by  the  offer  of  a  service,  but  that 
something  should  be  done,  viz.  the  sovereign  (say)  trans- 
ferred from  my  pocket  to  yours.  That  is  impossible 
unless  you  consent.     Now  what  I  want  my  conscience 


THE   QUEST  FOR   SAFE-CONDUCT 

to  tell  me  is  not  whether  it  is  right  for  me  to  have 
certain  generous  impulses  towards  you,  but  whether  it 
is  right  to  do  this  thing  ;  and  I  am  at  once  stopped 
short  by  the  reflection  that  unless  your  conscience 
concurs  the  thing  simply  cannot  be  done  at  all.  My 
conscience,  therefore,  in  its  isolation  is  unable  to  solve 
the  question  I  want  answered.  Nothing  could  be  more 
futile  than  to  go  on  reiterating  the  fatuous  maxim  that 
each  man  has  control  over  his  own  actions.  The  fact  is 
that,  in  the  field  we  are  now  considering — the  field  of 
social  relations — there  are  no  actions  which  a  man  can 
call  exclusively  his  own.  The  action  is  a  joint  affair : 
it  takes  two  or  more  to  perform  it.  The  other  is  always 
implicated  in  the  control.  The  notion  that  your  buying 
and  my  selling  are  two  separate  actions  which  make  the 
transaction  by  mechanical  addition ;  that  being  thus 
separate  each  of  them  is  susceptible  of  moral  valuation 
on  its  own  account — this  notion  is  the  source  of  a  whole 
progeny  of  pernicious  mistakes.  My  buying  and  your 
selling  are  inseparable  and  meaningless  if  you  take 
them  apart ;  each  is  then  a  pure  abstraction  devoid  of 
content.  My  selling  is  simply  your  buying  looked 
at  from  my  end ;  your  buying  is  my  selling  looked 
at  from  your  end.  This  will  be  found  to  hold  good 
throughout  the  entire  system  of  moral  relationships. 
Every  action  is  a  transaction,  or  interaction,  and  it  is 
always  as  a  concrete  transaction,  and  not  as  an  abstract 
action,  that  the  thing  is  either  right  or  wrong.  It 
follows  that  the  conscience  of  the  abstract  individual 
has  no  power  of  dealing  with  the  concrete  situation ; 
and  the  fact  that  we  do  deal  with  it  every  hour  of  our 
lives  is  proof  enough  that  we  are  not  abstract  individuals, 
not  separate  and  independent  agents,  and  shows  that 


284  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

the  theory  which  treats  us  as  such  can  never  account 
for  moral  judgment. 

If,  however,  you  still  persist  in  dividing  conduct 
into  two  halves,  yours  and  mine,  which  by  mere 
juxtaposition  make  up  the  total  deed ;  if  you  say  that 
each  of  these  halves  is  a  real  action  and  that  I  am 
solely  responsible  for  my  half  and  you  for  yours;  if 
you  affirm  that  your  authority  or  your  science  dictates 
infallibly  how  you  are  to  conduct  your  half  of  the 
operation  and  mine  renders  the  same  service  for  me, 
then  you  must  state  precisely  what  this  half  action  is 
for  which  each  of  us  is  severally  responsible.  Certainly 
it  is  not  my  selling,  for  that  involves  your  buying. 
Certainly  not  your  buying,  for  that  involves  my  selling. 
Each  of  these  is  the  whole,  regarded  from  different 
ends,  the  whole  transaction  in  which  we  are  both 
involved  and  not  a  half  for  which  either  can  be 
separately  responsible.  What,  then,  is  my  half,  and 
what  yours?  Assuming  a  correct  distribution  made, 
observe  what  follows.  You  assign  my  half  to  me  and 
make  me  solely  responsible  for  that;  you  take  your 
own  and  repudiate  all  responsibility  for  mine.  Good ; 
but  on  whom  rests  responsibility  for  the  total  trans- 
action, the  opus  operatum,  the  actual  deed  that  is 
done?  Nobody.  Were  I  responsible  for  the  deed, 
I  should  get  involved  in  your  responsibilities ;  were 
you  responsible  you  would  get  involved  in  mine,  which 
is  the  very  position  that  individual  ethics  must  avoid. 
The  method  of  halving  responsibilities  works  out  to 
this :  each  of  us  is  responsible  for  something  which  is 
not  done;  while  for  the  thing  that  is  done,  the  opus 
operatum,  neither  of  us  is  responsible.  The  isolated 
judgment,   torn   from   its   context,    misses    the    issue ; 


THE   QUEST  FOR  SAFE-CONDUCT  285 

it  tells  us  what  we  do  not  want  to  know — something 
about  a  part  that  is  never  played ;  about  the  part 
that  is  to  be  played,  about  the  deed  that  is  to  be  done, 
it  can  tell  us  nothing. 

For  these  reasons,  and  for  many  others  which  need 
not  be  stated  here,  it  seems  likely  that  the  attempt 
to  place  the  Seat  of  Authority  in  the  individual  con- 
science, regarded,  of  course,  as  merely  individual,  must 
go  the  way  of  all  the  other  attempts  that  have  been 
made  to  find  for  man  a  rule  of  definite,  detailed,  and 
infallible  guidance  through  the  dangers  of  his  mortal 
lot.  This  failure,  again,  we  may  regard  without  the 
least  dismay.  The  notion  of  infallibility,  even  in  the 
form  here  assigned  it,  far  from  being  needed  by  the 
moral  consciousness,  is  one  for  which  the  moral  life 
has  actually  no  place.  Morality  is  a  wider  enterprise 
than  anything  involved  in  mere  submission  to  a  rule 
knpwn  to  be  indefeasible  and  inerrant.  It  contains 
an  element  of  faith,  of  courage,  of  daring,  of  willing- 
ness to  face  the  risk  which  cannot  be  avoided  in  any 
finite  dealing  with  infinite  and  eternal  things. 

To  the  intuitionist  school,  however,  is  due  the  high 
honour  of  having  treated  the  so-called  moral  "  problem  " 
by  a  method  distinct  from  that  which  is  applicable  to 
the  problems  of  the  scientific  intellect.  The  intuitionist 
has  discerned  that  moral  action  is  not  the  mere  result 
of  any  calculation  whatsoever,  no  matter  whether  the 
calculation  be  in  terms  of  Happiness,  Self-realisation, 
or  anything  else.  What  ought  to  be  done  can  never 
be  demonstrated  in  the  sense  in  which  we  can  demon- 
strate the  answer  to  any  scientific  problem,  the  essence 
of  morality  being,  not  the  mere  registration  in  action 
of  a   demonstrated   result,   but  the   willingness  to  go 


286  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

beyond  the  proof  and  to  take  risks  in  a  realm  where 
no  proof  is  to  be  had.  Those  who  delay  moral  action 
until  a  scientific  justification  is  forthcoming  of  what 
they  are  about  to  do  will  wait  for  ever ;  they  will  do 
nothing.  This  the  intuitionist  has  seen.  To  him, 
more  than  to  any  others,  we  owe  a  just  estimate  of 
the  moral  dangers  of  allowing  our  wills  to  dance 
attendance  on  a  spurious  "  science  of  ethics."  In  such 
a  "  science  "  there  is  and  can  be  no  conclusiveness,  and 
the  habit  of  waiting  for  its  conclusions,  fostered  by 
the  mere  use  of  the  word  "  science  "  in  this  connection, 
prevents  the  will  from  grappling  with  that  element  of 
inconclusiveness  which  is  present  in  every  genuinely 
moral  situation. 

It  may  be  that  while  rejecting  the  authority  of 
"  science  "  the  intuitionist  has  repeated  the  error  of  his 
opponents  by  setting  up  the  authority  of  conscience. 
Wherever  the  latter  authority  is  represented  as  inde- 
feasible, as  infallible  ad  hoc,  we  are  prone  to  think  that 
the  intuitionist  has  indeed  fallen  into  the  very  error 
from  which  he  would  escape.  Nevertheless,  the  appeal 
to  conscience,  when  it  carries  no  expectation  of  an 
infallible  answer,  betokens  the  attitude  of  mind  which 
is,  of  all,  most  favourable  to  the  moral  life.  This  appeal 
may  not  end  in  the  avoidance  of  mistakes;  but  it  is 
more  likely  than  any  other  to  end  in  the  doing  of 
moral  deeds.  Speaking  broadly,  it  is  hardly  too  much 
to  say  that  in  the  moral  world  the  appeal  to  conscience 
is  the  surest  way  to  get  things  done.  It  leads  to  action 
—just  as  mere  "  science  "  leads  to  inaction.  For  con- 
science rightly  understood  is  no  faculty  of  abstract 
judgment  laying  down  propositions  as  to  what  ought 
and  ought  not  to  be  done ;  it  is  not  a  "  voice,"  though 


THE   QUEST  FOR   SAFE-CONDUCT  287 

we  often  name  it  such,  bidding  us  do  this  or  that ;  it 
is  rather  an  elan  vital,  an  impulse,  an  active  principle, 
nay,  the  good  Will  itself.  In  submitting  to  conscience, 
therefore,  we  are  doing  more  than  appealing  to  a 
tribunal  for  judgment ;  we  are  calling  up  our  moral 
powers,  we  are  opening  the  way  for  those  dynamic 
instincts  which  are  the  vital  principles  of  our  self- 
conscious  being. 

Is  it  necessary  to  further  define  this  principle  of  con- 
science ?  Does  the  will  need  to  know  the  formula  of  its 
action  before  it  can  act  ?  We  think  not.  This  is  a  case 
in  which  action  fathers  knowledge  and  not  knowledge 
action.  Whatever  definition  the  intelligence  may  offer 
of  that  absolute  obligation  which  is  said  to  he  felt — and 
this  word  is  a  warning  against  too  rigid  definition — 
will  be  found  on  examination  to  have  been  revealed  by 
the  action  of  the  will  itself,  and  not  prescribed  for  the 
will  in  advance  of  performance.  Nothing  less  than 
the  good  will — and  be  it  remembered  that  the  good  will 
exists  only  in  action — can  ever  reveal  what  the  nature 
of  the  good  will  is.  It  must  be  left  to  tell  its  own 
story  in  its  own  way ;  and  the  story  it  tells  of  itself 
is  expressed  in  the  form  of  moral  actions  ;  its  language 
is  the  language  of  deeds,  not  of  ethical  theories  alone. 
All  that  science  can  do  here  is  to  follow  after,  while 
the  will  leads  the  way.  There  is,  indeed,  no  surer 
means  of  degrading  the  conscience  than  to  treat  it  as 
a  problem  requiring  an  answer.  A  man  who  allows 
the  challenge  of  conscience  to  fall  primarily  upon  his 
intellect,  whose  first  business  with  conscience  is  to 
formulate  the  principle  of  its  action — a  man,  that  is, 
who  delays  the  use  of  his  conscience  until  he  can 
wholly  understand  and  define  the  nature  of  that  impulse 


288  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

which  bids  him  act — such  a  man,  we  do  not  hesitate 
to  say,  is  approaching  that  point  of  immoral  neutraUty, 
that  dead  centre  of  the  will  at  which  he  will  cease  to 
have  any  conscience  at  all. 

In  the  world  of  problems  and  appended  solutions 
conscience  has  no  natural  place.  It  is  only  as  living 
in  a  wider  world  than  that  which  is  handled  by  the 
problem-solving  intellect,  it  is  only  as  holding  converse 
with  Reality  on  sides  other  than  those  which  address 
the  speculative  Reason,  that  man  has  need  for  such 
a  faculty.  However  much  the  conscience  of  to-day 
may  owe  to  past  reflection  on  moral  issues,  we  can 
easily  satisfy  ourselves  that  the  understanding  of  its 
own  nature,  the  formulation  of  its  own  principle,  was 
never  the  first  thing  that  conscience  asked  for  but 
always  the  last.  Love  has  always  been  the  fulfilling  of 
the  law,  and  love  is  ahead  of  all  definitions  and  inde- 
pendent of  all  formal  guarantees. 

Suppose  a  man  to  say,  "  There  are  wrongs  to  be  re- 
dressed. As  to  the  remedy  we  can  only  dimly  guess 
at  this  and  that.  No  infallible  guidance  is  obtainable. 
Any  remedy  now  proposed  may  ultimately  do  more 
harm  than  good.  It  remains  either  to  make  an  experi- 
ment or  do  nothing.  I  will  make  an  experiment  based 
on  the  fullest  knowledge  1  can  obtain,  but  on  a  clear 
understanding  with  myself  that  this  knowledge  is 
fallible.  I  will  lay  down  my  life  to  carry  this  experiment 
through,  even  though  I  may  be  told  on  the  Judgment 
Day  that  the  enterprise  is  vain.  For  the  sake  of  the 
right  I  will  run  the  risk  of  being  ad  hoc  in  the  wrong." 
Such  language  would,  I  think,  express  the  voice  of  the 
moral  consciousness  in  its  moment  of  deepest  insight 
and  most  heroic   resolution.     It  is  by  men  who  have 


THE   QUEST  FOR   SAFE-CONDUCT  289 

thus  argued  that  the  moral  progress  of  the  world  has 
been  accomplished.  And  in  paying  these  the  honour 
they  deserve  we  must  not  forget  that  many  a  Columbus 
has  sailed  into  the  West  and  never  come  back.  History 
for  the  most  part  keeps  a  record  only  of  such  moral 
experiments  as  turn  out  well ;  but  there  are  thousands 
that  fail — fail,  I  mean,  in  respect  of  their  intended 
results,  fail  from  the  point  of  view  of  "  science,"  though 
in  a  deeper  sense  they  may  illustrate  the  most  splendid 
triumphs  of  the  Moral  Ideal. 

It  may  be  argued  that  there  are  certain  precepts  of 
morality  about  which  every  sane  man  is  absolutely  sure. 
We  are  absolutely  sure  that  it  is  wrong  to  practise 
polygamy  or  to  eat  human  flesh.  Any  portion  of  the 
Moral  Code  that  can  be  regarded  as  permanently  estab- 
lished is  virtually  infallible.  And  here,  of  course,  no 
infallible  guidance  is  needed.  A  conscience  which  can 
only  declare  that  cannibalism  is  wrong,  and  such  like, 
is  obviously  an  otiose  faculty  among  people  who  have 
outgrown  the  desire  to  eat  their  fellow-men.  It  were 
well,  too,  that  we  should  remember  the  history  of  these 
infallible  rules.  Like  everything  else  they  have  grown 
to  be  what  they  are.  Every  accepted  rule  had  a  begin- 
ning in  the  example  of  some  daring  pioneer  who  took 
his  moral  life  in  his  hands  in  the  effort  to  find  out  a 
better  way.  Stealing  was  considered  a  virtue  in  primitive 
societies.  There  is  a  tribe  in  the  Khyber  Pass  whose 
children  are  ceremonially  admitted  into  the  sacred 
communion  of  thieves.  The  child  is  passed  by  its 
parents  through  a  magic  hoop,  and  the  priest  who 
stands  by  calls  out,  ''  Now  he  is  a  good  thief."  From 
such  beginnings  as  this  has  the  virtue  of  honesty  been 
evolved,  and  every  step  of  that  evolution  has  been  the 

19 


290  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

work  of  men  who  would  be  condemned  by  the  existing 
morality  of  their  times.  So  with  Benevolence  in  all  its 
forms.  It  is  one  thing,  as  we  have  seen,  to  copy  the 
example  of  the  Good  Samaritan ;  it  was  another  thing 
for  the  Good  Samaritan  to  set  that  example  in  face  of 
a  moral  code  which  declared  that  the  Jews  and  the 
Samaritans  were  to  have  no  dealings. 

Moreover,  as  each  accepted  rule  has  grown  to  be 
what  it  is,  so  the  whole  body  of  established  morality  is 
even  now  growing  into  higher  forms.  Every  detail  of 
it  is  continually  calling  for  pioneers  to  extend  its 
applications  into  the  hinterland  of  human  life  and 
adapt  its  requirements  to  new  conditions.  The  meaning 
of  moral  terms  is  continually  changing  with  the  evolu- 
tion of  society.  This  very  notion  of  stealing  is  an 
instance.  The  characteristic  thief  of  modern  society  is 
not  the  burglar  or  the  highwayman,  but  quite  a  different 
sort  of  person,  who  at  present  hardly  realises  that  he  is 
a  thief.  There  is  no  man  living  in  society  to-day  who 
is  not  an  accessory  either  before  or  after  the  fact  in 
many  a  complicated  process  by  which  extensive  harm 
is  done  to  his  fellow- men,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that 
posterity  will  judge  this  complicity  by  a  standard  quite 
out  of  keeping  with  the  epitaphs  we  now  engrave  on 
the  tombs  of  our  most  respected  relatives  and  friends. 
A  man  who  receives  an  income  he  has  not  earned  may 
do  so  in  good  conscience ;  but  his  conscience  will  be 
all  the  better  if  he  clearly  understands  that  he  runs  the 
risk  of  standing  before  the  morality  of  the  future  pre- 
cisely as  the  moss-troopers  and  pirates  of  the  sixteenth 
century  stand  before  the  morality  of  to-day.  There  is 
a  host  of  questions  of  this  kind  which  awake  in  fresh 
forms  with  every  change  in  the  ever-changing  complex 


THE  QUEST  FOR  SAFE-CONDUCT  291 

of  human  society.  It  is  here,  on  the  frontier  line, 
where  we  stand  facing  those  new  regions  into  which 
the  voice  of  authority  has  not  yet  penetrated,  that  the 
burden,  the  responsibiUty,  and  the  splendour  of  the 
moral  life  exist  for  us  all. 

Let  us  remember  also  that  the  sanctity  of  established 
morality  can  be  maintained  only  so  long  as  we  are 
continually  developing  the  implications  of  the  Moral 
Ideal.  In  vain  do  we  try  to  persuade  Bill  Sykes  to 
give  up  his  profession  in  a  society  where  worse  forms 
of  malpractice  than  his  are,  I  do  not  say  condoned, 
but  not  even  recognised  for  what  they  are.  We  should 
be  well  advised  to  deal  gently  with  Bill  Sykes  in  this 
matter.  At  all  events,  we  can  easily  avoid  the  mistake 
of  superimposing  our  conscience  on  his,  or  of  thinking 
that  his  moral  "problem"  in  the  presence  of  an  un- 
guarded cash-box  is  the  same  as  our  own.  If  we  would 
judge  Bill  fairly  we  should  think,  not  of  what  we  should 
feel  and  do  in  regard  to  the  cash-box,  but  of  what  we 
should  feel  and  do  on  realising  that  the  money  in  our 
pockets  represented  another  man's  labour  rather  than 
our  own — and  in  regard  to  many  other  matters  of  the 
same  sort  about  which  we  are  not  altogether  comfort- 
able in  mind.  Few  of  us  dare  claim  an  infallible 
scientific  authority  for  what  we  do  in  these  matters, 
stoutly  as  we  may  argue  in  defence  of  the  action  we 
take ;  and  it  is  for  that  very  reason  that  these  disput- 
able and  disputed  situations  afford  an  opportunity  for 
displaying  the  moral,  or  immoral,  bias  of  our  wills. 

We  may  ask,  in  conclusion,  what  actual  effects  on 
human  character  are  likely  to  be  produced  by  a  theory 
which  makes  the  moral  life  consist  in  submission  to  an 
indefeasible  authority,  no  matter  whether  that  authority 


292  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

be  "  external "  or  "  internal."  A  person  holding  this  view 
will  naturally  tend  to  limit  his  sphere  of  moral  action 
to  that  type  of  performance  in  which  the  safe- conduct  of 
science  or  conscience  is  actually  forthcoming.  Believing 
that  duty  lies  in  submission  to  a  definite  command,  his 
conception  of  duty  will  tend  to  stop  at  the  point  beyond 
which  the  definite  command  is  no  longer  heard,  and  to 
include  only  such  performance  as  represents  an  equally 
definite  act  of  submission  to  the  commanding  voice. 
The  sphere  marked  out  for  the  development  of  his 
character  is  the  sphere  of  established  morality,  the 
conduct  which  is  approved  by  enlightened  public 
opinion,  and  explicitly  enjoined  in  whatever  code  he 
may  regard  as  highest.  Such  a  character  will  tend 
to  be  correct,  but  unprogressive ;  irreproachable,  but 
limited.  Its  history  will  contain  few  tragedies,  but 
also  few  triumphs.  The  society  where  the  type  prevails 
will  be  conspicuously  clean  ;  but  it  will  be  weak  on 
the  side  of  courage,  faith,  and  enterprise ;  having  in- 
herited a  certain  level  of  moral  excellence  it  will 
remain  stationary  at  that  level ;  its  temper  will  be 
essentially  legal  and  conservative  and  perhaps  timid  ; 
it  will  occasionally  degenerate  towards  a  Pharisaic 
pride ;  it  will  discourage  originality  and  be  afraid  of 
it ;  it  will  produce  no  new  types :  out  of  its  bosom  no 
Columbus  will  set  sail  into  the  West — perhaps  to  be 
heard  of  no  more.  It  will  honour  those  who  have  set 
great  examples  in  the  past,  but  it  will  fail  of  high  deeds 
through  not  perceiving  that  the  only  way  to  morally 
imitate  an  old  example  is  to  set  a  new  one. 

Such  a  type  of  character  is  likely  to  be  common 
wherever  the  idea  of  fixed  rule  is  the  centre  of  moral 
teaching.     We   cannot  deny  its   value.     In   a  society 


THE   QUEST  FOR  SAFE-CONDUCT  293 

which  not  only  tolerates  but  requires  a  great  variety 
of  moral  types  for  its  healthy  development,  the  type 
before  us  stands  for  the  element  of  stability  so  essential 
to  ordered  progress  and  helps  to  preserve  an  unbroken  line 
of  communications  with  the  past.  It  corresponds  in 
the  moral  world  to  the  House  of  Lords  in  the  British 
Constitution.  At  the  same  time  we  may  well  doubt 
whether  this  type,  lofty  as  it  may  be  in  some  respects,  is 
the  one  for  which  there  is  the  widest  use  and  the  most 
urgent  need  at  the  present  stage  of  social  evolution; 
and  we  may  confidently  say  that  elevation  to  this  kind 
of  ethical  peerage  is  not  the  highest  ambition  to  place 
before  a  young  and  ardent  soul.  The  world  needs, 
as  it  has  never  needed  before,  a  spirit  of  ethical  ex- 
periment which  the  clinging  to  safe-conduct  is  likely 
to  suppress.  We  may  admit,  indeed  we  must  anxiously 
consider,  the  dangers  attendant  upon  such  enterprises, 
always  subject  to  the  principle  that  without  danger 
the  work  of  the  Moral  Will  cannot  be  done  ;  and  never 
forgetting  that  all  we  now  securely  hold  in  morality 
was  at  the  beginning  the  doing  of  pioneers — of  men 
who  took  their  lives  in  their  hands.  We  need  to 
recognise  that  with  every  step  in  the  organisation  of 
society  questions  of  morality  assume  more  and  more 
of  a  social  character  and  become  less  and  less  matters 
of  private  and  individual  concern.  The  high  walls 
which  formerly  secluded  the  lives  of  different  classes 
from  each  other's  knowledge  have  disappeared.  We 
all  live  in  the  light  of  our  neighbours'  eyes.  We  who 
judge  others  to  be  sinners  are  being  judged  as  sinners 
by  them.  Bill  Sykes  thinks  meanly  of  us — not  without 
reasons.  The  consequence  is  that  the  action  of 
example  is  much  more  rapid  than  formerly,  the  influence 


294  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

of  different  men  and  different  classes  upon  one  another 
much  more  potent  and  immediate.  Applying  this 
to  the  question  of  the  moral  reformation  of  those 
whom  we  choose  to  call  "  bad  men,"  we  get  the  answer 
that  the  only  form  of  society  under  which  the  worst 
men  will  become  good  is  that  in  which  the  best  men 
are  becoming  better.  In  modern  life,  with  all  its 
closeness  of  interaction  and  mutual  intimacy  of  know- 
ledge, this  is  the  first  condition  needed  for  the  reforma- 
tion of  the  vicious.  Now  the  tendency  of  authoritative 
ethics  is  always  to  concentrate  attention  on  the  case 
of  the  wicked  and  to  overlook  what  is  equally  needed, 
namely,  the  improvement  of  the  good.  For  a  good 
man,  who  has  kept  all  the  commandments  from  his 
youth  up,  is  apt  to  ask  himself  with  a  certain  self- 
complacency,  "  What  more  remains  for  me  to  do  ? " 
The  answer  is  that  everything  yet  remains  for  him  to 
do  by  which  his  righteousness  is  to  exceed  that  of 
the  scribes  and  Pharisees.  His  moral  development, 
arrested  at  the  line  where  the  voice  of  authority  ceases 
to  speak,  contributes  no  vital  energy  to  the  life  of  a 
rapidly  developing  society.  Beyond  this  line  there 
lies  a  whole  host  of  tremendous  moral  tasks  roughly 
indicated  by  the  hint  given  to  the  rich  ruler,  "  that  he 
should  sell  all  that  he  had  and  give  to  the  poor."  In 
this  group  of  tasks,  which  constitute  the  life-business 
of  every  man  who  "is  perfect  in  the  works  of  the 
law,"  the  safe-conduct  of  scientific  guidance  is  not  to  be 
had.  And  it  is  through  the  habit  of  seeking  for  safe- 
conduct  that  we  become  both  blind  to  the  existence  of 
such  tasks  and  incompetent  to  deal  with  them  when 
discovered  by  others.  What  is  now  required  is 
imagination,   creativeness,   initiative,   and    that    heroic 


THE   QUEST   FOR   SAFE-CONDUCT  295 

willingness  to  trust  oneself  to  the  unknown  which  is 
seldom  to  be  found  among  the  painstaking  and  meti- 
culous observers  of  the  law.  The  needed  change  in 
moral  teaching  would  therefore  take  the  form  of  less 
insistence  on  submission  to  authority,  and  more  insistence 
on  the  fundamental  virtues  of  courage  and  faith. 


XIIL— MORAL  EDUCATION 

It  is  one  thing  to  maintain  that  virtue  can  be  taught ; 
it  is  another  thing  to  assume  that  the  way  to  teach 
it  is  by  set  lessons  in  virtue.  These  two  positions  are 
commonly  confused.  We  may  assent  to  the  first  and 
deny  the  second. 

While  admitting  that  the  education  of  character  is 
the  most  important  function  of  the  teacher,  I  cannot 
repress  the  belief  that  to  teach  morals  departmentally, 
as  a  subject  among  subjects,  at  set  hours,  as  a  formal 
exercise,  and  by  the  aid  of  some  elementary  "Moral 
Science,"  is  an  undertaking  which  in  spite  of  its  good 
intentions  may  end  in  disaster.  It  will  create  expec- 
tations that  cannot  be  fulfilled  ;  will  teach  the  pupil  to 
lean  on  a  staff  that  breaks  under  pressure ;  and  will 
provoke  a  hostile  reaction  against  the  idea  of  morality. 

For  whereas  the  pupil  will  find  that  every  other 
science  does  help  him  to  solve  the  problems  to  which 
it  is  addressed,  moral  science  does  not  solve  the  moral 
problem  but  merely  gives  to  it  a  new  and  a  more  diffi- 
cult form.  This  we  have  already  endeavoured  to  make 
clear.  It  remains  to  consider  its  bearing  on  the  moral 
education  of  the  young. 

To  illustrate  our  point  we  will  recur  to  the  former 
example  of  the  Good  Samaritan  and  suppose  him  to 
have  received  instruction  according  to  the  programme 

296 


MORAL  EDUCATION  297 

of  some  moral  science  extant  in  his  day.  Lesson  1 
will  have  taught  him  that  his  duty  is  to  succour  those 
in  distress.  Lesson  37 — under  a  remote  section,  or 
perhaps  in  the  Appendix — will  also  have  taught  him 
that  it  is  contrary  to  duty  to  have  dealings  with  the 
Jews.  Equipped  with  this  teaching  he  now  faces  the 
actual  situation,  and  finds  to  his  great  perplexity  that 
the  person  on  the  road  is  both  a  wounded  man,  whom 
Lesson  1  says  he  ought  to  succour,  and  a  Jew,  whom 
Lesson  37  says  he  ought  to  leave  alone.  Thus  the 
point  at  which  his  problem  begins  is  precisely  that 
at  which  his  science  deserts  him.  To  be  more  exact, 
his  science  creates  the  perplexity,  and  leaves  him  to 
resolve  it  as  best  he  may.  Or,  if  this  seem  unfair,  let 
us  say  that  it  defines,  or  helps  to  define,  the  problem 
that  has  to  be  solved.  But  is  there  any  other  science 
which  merely  defines  a  problem  ?  Could  we  claim,  for 
instance,  that  the  teaching  of  Physics  consisted  in  defin- 
ing the  problems  with  which  Physics  has  to  deal  ? 

The  example  cited  merely  serves,  of  course,  to  illus- 
trate the  commonplace  that  morality  has  to  do  with  a 
"  conflict  of  duties."  Virtue  is  a  "  mean " ;  its  office 
being,  not  obedience  to  rules  taken  one  by  one,  but  the 
adjustment  of  their  conflicting  claims.  So  long  as  we 
are  contemplating  an  isolated  moral  rule  —  as  that 
"  Truth  ought  to  be  told  " — we  are  not  in  sight  of  any 
moral  problem ;  this  comes  into  view  only  when,  over 
against  the  reasons  for  telHng  the  truth,  other  reasons 
appear  which  seem  to  justify,  or  call  for,  the  telling  of 
a  lie.  This  needs  only  to  be  stated  to  make  it  abund- 
antly clear  that  whatever  else  we  may  be  doing  in 
teaching  the  rule  that  "  truth  ought  to  be  told,"  we  are 
not  teaching  virtue.     For  virtue,  we  repeat,  lies  not  in 


298  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

the  blind  acceptance  of  the  rule  as  valid  for  all  occasions, 
but  in  the  moral  skill  which  directs  its  application  or 
its  abandonment  in  a  given  case.  About  this,  which  is 
the  crux  of  the  whole  matter,  no  information  is  or 
can  be  given  by  any  moral  text-book ;  for  the  necessary 
adjustments  of  every  rule  to  every  other  rule  would 
run  out  to  infinity,  and  even  if  attempted  could  be 
given  only  in  general  forms  which  would  always  miss 
the  nuances  of  their  particular  application.  No  doubt 
it  may  be  said,  and  said  with  perfect  truth,  that  virtue 
cannot  do  its  work  of  adjustment  unless  we  know  what 
it  is  we  have  to  adjust,  and  this  knowledge  is  precisely 
what  the  moral  educator  gives,  and  what  it  is  so 
important  he  should  give,  by  the  teaching  of  particular 
moral  rules.  But  then  we  must  ask.  By  what  right  is 
this  kind  of  education  called  "moral"?  So  regarded, 
the  rule  "  Tell  the  truth  "  differs  in  no  essential  character 
from  the  rule  "  Keep  your  powder  dry,"  or  "  Wait  till 
the  train  has  passed  before  crossing  the  line,"  or  "  Be 
on  your  guard  against  tuberculous  milk."  By  calling  it 
"  moral,"  occasion  is  given  to  the  mistaken  belief  that 
we  are  teaching  virtue  ;  the  truth  being  that  by  impart- 
ing this  kind  of  information  we  get  no  nearer  the 
teaching  of  virtue  than  if  we  were  engaged  in  spreading 
any  other  kind  of  scientific  knowledge. 

And  lest  this  should  be  treated  as  a  mere  quibble  about 
words,  let  us  hasten  to  point  out  the  supreme  importance 
of  guarding  ourselves  from  illusion  in  these  matters. 
We  are  all  too  ready  to  believe  that  anything  and 
everything  can  be  bought  for  money — or  provided  by  the 
State.  We  have  only  to  set  up  some  system  of  teach- 
ing and  call  it  **  moral  education,"  and  parents  will  begin 
to   flatter  themselves  that  they  are  relieved  from  the 


MORAL  EDUCATION  299 

responsibility  of  training  the  characters  of  their  children. 
Is  not  the  State  or  the  schoolmaster  doing  the  business 
as  a  quid  pro  quo  ?  Are  not  daily  lessons  being  given 
in  honesty,  purity,  charity,  and  the  rest  ?  What,  then, 
remains  for  us  to  do?  The  answer  is  that  so  far  as 
virtue  or  character  is  concerned  everything  remains  to 
do.  Virtue  is  precisely  one  of  those  human  accomplish- 
ments which  cannot  be  taught  by  machinery  of  this 
kind,  no  matter  how  cunningly  contrived ;  and  it  is 
infinitely  important  for  all  of  us,  and  for  parents 
especially,  to  escape  from  the  illusion  that  it  can. 
This  disastrous  illusion  is  fostered  by  exhibiting  as 
"  moral  education  "  what  after  all  may  be  nothing  more 
than  a  slight  addition  to  the  child's  general  knowledge 
of  the  world  in  which  he  lives.  Extend  his  knowledge 
in  these  directions  as  far  as  you  may,  it  will  always  be 
found  that  "  virtue  "  depends  on  something  which  lies 
outside,  though  perhaps  only  just  outside,  the  line 
which  the  information  given  him  has  reached.  What 
a  community  may  have  to  pay  for  overlooking  this  none 
too  obvious  truth  is  illustrated  at  the  present  moment 
in  France,  where  an  alarming  increase  in  the  statistics 
of  child-criminality — which  reveal  an  extraordinary  pre- 
valence of  suicidal  mania  among  boys  and  girls — and  a 
rapidly  diminishing  birth-rate  have  been  synchronous 
with  a  period  of  universal  "moral"  education  in 
schools.^ 

^  I  am  far  from  saying  that  those  lamentable  results  must  be 
attributed  wholly  to  the  system  of  moral  education  adopted  in  France. 
Enough  that  it  has  not  prevented  them.  In  the  light  of  these  events 
it  is  interesting  to  read  the  words  of  M.  Gambetta  spoken  in  1881  : 
"  They  (our  children)  will  understand  nothing  of  these  old-fashioned 
fears;  for  they  will  not  have  to  make  for  themselves  their  code  of 
free  conscience  and  free  thought ;  they  will  have  imbibed  it  in  their 


300  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

There  are,  indeed,  good  reasons  to  fear  that  the 
children  themselves  may  suffer  direct  and  serious  harm 
from  the  attempt  to  treat  morality  as  a  "  department " 
of  education.  Some  of  these  reasons  are  well  known  ; 
some,  on  the  other  hand,  have  been  overlooked. 
Among  the  first,  it  is  generally  admitted  that  the 
perfunctory  teaching  of  morals  is  worse  than  no 
teaching  at  all.  And  yet  it  is  hard  to  imagine  any 
general  system  of  dealing  with  this  subject  which 
would  not  become  sooner  or  later  the  merest  routine. 
Competence  for  the  training  of  character  is  a  rare  gift ; 
and  of  all  the  blunders  into  which  men  may  be  led 
by  their  faith  in  machinery,  we  cannot  conceive  of 
anything  more  disastrous  than  the  issue  of  a  general 
order  to  all  teachers — or  even  to  all  head-masters — to 
carry  out  some  cut-and-dried  system  of  moral  educa- 
tion. It  needs  but  little  imagination  to  picture  the 
result — the  formality  of  the  process,  the  half-hearted- 
ness  of  the  teacher,  the  apathy  and  repugnance  of  the 
taught.  To  save  such  a  system  from  rapid  degenera- 
tion into  a  means  of  producing  effects  the  very  opposite 
of  those  intended  would  be  beyond  the  wit  of  man. 
It  were  unfortunate  even  that  morality  should  be 
enveloped  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  school  lesson.  The 
duties  of  life  are  hard  enough ;  no  need  to  make  them 
harder  by  recollections  of  tedious  half  hours.  The  skill 
which  would  overcome  these  difficulties  is  precisely  the 
kind  of  skill  that  cannot  be  procured  to  order ;  nor  can 

mother's  milk  and  in  the  teaching  of  their  schoolmaster."  M.  Paul 
Bert,  speaking  on  the  same  subject,  said  :  "We  are  laying  the  founda- 
tion of  solid  consciences  which  will  bear  in  themselves  their  own 
sanction."  M.  Bert's  idea  of  morality  appears,  from  these  words,  to 
have  been  different  from  M.  Gambetta's ;  but  the  "  system  "  adopted 
seems  to  have  been  a  failure  from  both  points  of  view. 


MORAL  EDUCATION  801 

it,  if  procured,  be  regulated  as  to  its  operations  by  a 
code.  To  estimate  the  effects  of  moral  education 
reduced  to  a  "  system,"  one  has  to  imagine  that  system 
in  the  hands  of  the  relatively  unskilled.  And  the 
prospect  does  not  allure  us. 

But  there  is  a  deeper  and  less  noticed  reason  for 
fearing  the  results  of  treating  morality  as  an  item  in 
an  educational  curriculum.  It  is  that  such  treatment 
gives  rise  to  a  false  impression  in  the  pupil's  mind  of 
what  morality  is  and  means.  Accustomed  to  encounter 
this  subject  at  a  fixed  point  in  a  routine,  and  as  one 
among  many  things  he  has  to  learn,  he  naturally  comes 
to  think  of  morality  as  a  special  department  of  life,  as 
a  particular  interest  among  others,  as  a  thing  which  is 
on  and  off  like  drawing,  music,  or  mathematics,  accord- 
ing to  the  requirements  of  the  hour.  It  is  hardly  pos- 
sible to  avoid  creating  this  impression,  whatever  formal 
means  may  be  taken  to  guard  against  it.  Need  it  be 
pointed  out  that  such  a  conception  of  morality  will 
more  than  undo  any  good  that  may  be  otherwise 
achieved  ?  One  might  truly  say  that  the  prime  object 
of  moral  education  is  to  extirpate,  or  at  all  events 
preclude,  the  idea  of  morality  as  a  sectional  interest 
of  life.  Unless  it  can  be  taught  in  its  universal  char- 
acter, it  cannot  be  taught  at  all;  for  morality  is  uni- 
versal or  nothing.  And  though  these  are  terms  that 
cannot  be  introduced  to  children,  they  are  yet  of  vital 
importance  to  the  teacher,  who  will  soon  find  that  the 
attempt  to  teach  departmentally  what  by  its  innermost 
nature  is  not  departmental  but  universal,  is  a  self- 
defeating  enterprise  from  the  outset.  It  is  bad  enough 
that  duty  should  carry  the  associations  of  a  formal 
lesson,   or  wake  the  memories   of  dull  exercises  and 


302  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

weary  hours ;  it  is  still  worse  when  continual  admoni- 
tions act — and  they  often  do  so  act — as  suggestions  of 
the  very  evil  they  are  intended  to  prevent ;  but  the 
worst  is  reached  when,  in  addition  to  all  this,  the  idea 
of  morality  as  an  item  in  the  school  programme  is 
translated  by  the  pupil  into  the  idea  of  morality  as 
an  item  in  the  business  of  life.  Any  system  of  moral 
education  which  does  not  guard  against  this  danger  is 
to  be  condemned.  And  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  a 
safeguard  that  would  be  sufficient.  Whatever  might 
be  said  to  the  pupil  about  the  matter,  the  fact  that 
morality  was  treated  departmentally,  that  it  came  on 
and  went  off  like  other  things,  would  inevitably  tend 
to  a  similar  conception  concerning  moral  practice. 
And  if  it  be  answered  that  morality  (and  religion) 
have  always  been  taught  at  set  times  and  places,  as 
items  in  the  programme  of  the  week's  business,  I  can 
only  reply  that  the  objector  is  here  pointing,  not  to 
the  strongest,  but  to  the  weakest  feature  in  moral  and 
religious  instruction  as  hitherto  carried  on.  It  is  only 
when  we  turn  to  the  case  of  the  young  that  the  peculiar 
evils  of  this  method  become  manifest.  Certainly,  were 
one  asked  to  lay  out  a  set  of  psychological  conditions 
from  which  moral  failure  is  likely  to  result  one  could 
hardly  do  it  better  than  by  drawing  the  character  of  a 
boy  who  has  enjoyed  in  all  their  fulness  the  doubtful 
advantages  of  some  wooden  or  mechanical  system  of 
moral  education.^ 

Now  if  we  are  to  deal  with  moral  education  at  all — 
and  of  course  it  has  to  be  dealt  with — it  were  well 
to  understand   from  the  outset  that  there   is  here  no 

1  Butler  has  drawn  this  character  in  The  Waij  of  all  Flesh — one  of 
the  great  novels  of  the  world. 


MORAL  EDUCATION  808 

question  of  introducing  a  new  subject,  namely,  morals, 
into  an  existing  curriculum,  but  only  of  introducing 
a  better  method  into  what  is  already  taught.  It  is  a 
question  as  to  the  scope  and  principles  of  education 
as  a  whole.  Putting  the  matter  on  the  broadest 
ground,  may  we  not  say  that  all  education  is  moral 
which  helps  or  incites  the  pupil  to  fulfil  a  definite 
purpose  in  life?  If  that  statement  seems  premature, 
we  may  be  content  for  the  present  with  this :  that 
all  education  is  immoral  which  has  no  bearing  on  a 
definite  life-purpose.  There  is  nothing  so  dangerous 
as  knowledge,  because  there  is  nothing  so  powerful ; 
and  any  knowledge  imparted  otherwise  than  as  a 
means  of  helping  the  taught  to  live  and  let  live  is  a 
menace  to  the  safety  and  well-being  of  the  human 
race.  When  once  this  principle  has  been  grasped  it 
wiU  be  seen  that  any  subject  may  be  taught  morally, 
and  that  every  subject  is  ill  taught  which  lacks  a 
moral  direction  as  defined.  Thus  a  boy  who  is  being 
taught  engineering  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  him  a 
"  good  "  engineer  is  being  morally  educated  ;  whereas 
another  who  is  merely  being  drilled  in  set  lessons  on 
the  virtues,  the  application  of  which  cannot  be  defined, 
is  not  only  getting  no  moral  education,  but  is  being 
exposed  to  dangers  which  bid  fair  to  make  him  an 
immoral  man.  The  engineer  who  builds  a  crazy 
bridge  or  a  rotten  embankment,  and  thereby  causes 
a  railway  accident  or  an  inundation,  does  no  credit  to 
his  moral  education  even  though  he  has  kept  all  the 
"  commandments  "  from  his  youth  up ;  and  if  that  is 
all  that  moral  education  can  produce,  then  the  less  we 
have  of  it  the  better.  Or,  to  put  the  same  point  other- 
wise.     A   wise   man,  eager   that   his   children  should 


304  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

develop  the  noblest  type  of  character,  would  probably 
prefer  to  send  them  to  a  school  where  history  and 
geography  were  being  taught  in  such  a  way  as  to 
make  them  proud  of  their  country  and  eager  to  play 
a  part  in  the  building  of  the  Empire,  rather  than  to 
another  where  an  artificial  scheme  of  moral  instruction 
was  in  vogue  and  well-meant  efforts  were  being  made 
to  imbue  young  minds  with  the  virtues  one  by  one. 
From  the  first  type  of  teaching  he  would  expect  what 
we  call  character;  and  character  in  which  the  gentler 
virtues  were  as  prominent  as  any  other.  The  second 
type,  he  would  fear,  might  result  in  the  production  of 
prigs  or  possibly  of  scoundrels. 

It  is  only  on  large  lines  of  that  kind,  which  embrace 
the  whole  scope  of  education,  that  the  training  of 
character  can  be  carried  on ;  while  any  process  which 
starts  from  the  assumption  that  the  pupil  is  a  patho- 
logical subject  to  be  dosed  with  tonics  and  fed  on 
previously  digested  food,  or  which  perverts  moral 
training  into  a  local  treatment  of  the  conscience,  is 
certain  to  end  badly.  Disaster  is  what  we  should 
also  expect  from  every  attempt  to  enforce  a  rigid 
pattern  of  virtue  or  a  set  of  duties.  Such  methods 
invariably  give  the  impression  to  the  pupil  that  another 
will  is  being  imposed  on  his  own ;  and  this  is  resented, 
not  because  the  pupil  is  corrupt,  but  because  his 
own  moral  nature,  being  healthy,  demands  autonomy. 
Nor  do  I  think  the  case  is  mended  one  whit  when 
the  will  imposed  on  the  pupil  is  represented  as 
"  higher  "  than  his  own.  This  is  apt  to  accentuate  the 
resentment  and  to  make  the  reaction  against  morality 
more  destructive. 

As  against  all  this,  1  would  submit  that  the  moral 


MORAL  EDUCATION  806 

educator  is  doing  his  work  whenever  he  is  presenting 

the   truth   of  the  human  environment   in   its   bearing 

on  the  definite   hfe-purpose  of  his  pupil.     He  should 

remember  that  every  fact  has  a  moral  meaning,  because 

it  contains  an  implicit  command  to  be  something  or  do 

something.     Thus  history  is  not  well  presented  until  we 

hear  it  commanding  us  to  be  good  citizens ;  geography 

commands  us   to  be  wide-minded,  mathematics  to  be 

accurate,  and  so  on  without  end.     The  teacher  who  has 

grasped  this  principle  will  unconsciously  handle  every 

subject  in  such  a  way  as  to  invigorate  the  moral  nature 

of  the  taught.     Making  the  least  use  possible  of  the 

mere   terminology   of  virtue,  he  will  turn  the  whole 

environment  of  the  pupils'  intelligence  into  a  field  for 

the  exercise  of  the  virtues.     Remembering  that  language 

is  always  an  inadequate  vehicle  for  the  expression  of 

morality,  he  will  prefer  to  leave  facts  and  events  and 

persons  to  tell  their  own  story,  cunningly  setting  them 

in  such  a  light  that  the  indicative  of  what  is  or  has  been 

is  inevitably  translated  by  the  pupil  into  the  imperative 

of  what  ought  to  be.     He  will  inculcate  no  virtue  for 

which  he  cannot  provide  an  immediate  field  of  exercise  ; 

he  will  be  careful  not  to  create  temptations  to  lying  by 

the  excessive  admonition  that  truth  ought  to  be  told ; 

nor  to  impurity  by  continually  imploring  his  pupils  to 

be  pure. 

This  is  nothing  else  than  to  say  that  all  education 

which  is  definitely  controlled  by  a  human  life-purpose 

is  moral ;  all  that  lacks  it,  immoral.     Intensification  of 

the  human  purpose  in  education  is  the  way  to  make 

education  moral.     And  here  one  must  confess  that  the 

outstanding  feature  of  so  much  that  passes  for  education  is 

its  appalling  lack  of  purpose.     There  are  many  elements 

20 


S06  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

in  our  educational  system  which  in  their  origin  had  a 
definite  relation  to  life-purpose.  They  have  survived 
into  an  age  when  the  life-purpose  they  once  served  has 
perished,  or  survives  only  in  partial  and  limited  forms. 
They  have  now  become  purposeless,  and  to  that  extent 
they  are  demoralising.  It  is  true  that  "  culture  "  has 
been  defined  in  a  way  which  makes  it  an  aimless 
acquisition.  Some  even  find  its  value  in  its  very  aim- 
lessness  ;  and  this  seems  to  underlie  certain  current 
theories  about  the  functions  of  Universities.  Instances 
are  alleged,  though  I  think  they  are  not  genuine,  in 
which  this  view  seems  to  produce  good  results.  What 
its  defenders  are  pleading  for  is  not,  in  truth,  the  elimina- 
tion of  purpose  from  teaching,  but  the  introduction  of 
higher  and  wider  purpose  than  that  which  is  recognised 
as  valid  by  common  minds.  Nevertheless  it  is  to  be 
greatly  feared  that  the  average  result  of  a  one-sided 
emphasis  on  the  higher  purpose  of  culture  is  not  a 
Matthew  Arnold  or  a  Jowett,  but  the  type  of  public 
school  boy  or  undergraduate  who  looks  upon  this 
world  merely  as  a  place  to  sprawl  round  in. 

It  is  not  possible  to  exaggerate  the  value  of  definite 
life-purpose  as  the  controlling  principle  of  moral 
education.  By  laying  stress  on  the  word  definite  we 
are  enabled  to  meet  the  chief  difficulty  which  such  a 
statement  seems  to  involve.  "  What !  "  it  will  be  said, 
"  are  all  purposes  equally  good  ?  Are  not  some 
distinctly  bad?"  To  this  we  may  answer  that  life- 
purpose  becomes  good  in  proportion  as  the  pupil  makes 
it  definite,  and  bad  in  proportion  as  he  leaves  it  vague. 
Suppose,  then,  a  man  were  to  say,  '*  My  purpose  is  to 
make  myself  the  biggest  blackguard  under  the  sun." 
What  would  the  moral  educator  do  with  him  ?     If  he 


MORAL  EDUCATION  807 

were  wise  he  would  accept  the  purpose  as  stated,  but 
challenge  the  man  to  make  it  definite.  Let  him  define 
all  the  forms  of  blackguardism  he  means  to  cultivate, 
let  him  unfold  their  implications,  and  before  the  process 
is  half  through  the  man  will  have  to  acknowledge  that 
his  alleged  life-purpose  is  nothing  but  a  mass  of  absurd 
contradictions  and  therefore  not  a  purpose  at  all.  It 
has  only  to  be  defined  to  be  dismissed.  The  act  of 
defining  life-purpose  is  the  most  wholesome  moral 
exercise  any  man  can  undertake  ;  for  in  so  doing,  what- 
ever is  bad  will  surely  get  itself  sifted  out  as  something 
which  no  rational  being  can  really  mean  to  aim  at. 
Therefore  we  need  not  hesitate  to  accept  any  purpose 
which  is  genuinely  definite,  in  the  sense  of  being  the 
object  the  man  really  means  to  pursue  as  the  aim  of  his 
life,  as  being  sufficiently  sound  to  provide  the  basis 
of  moral  education.  Let  it  be  remembered,  however, 
that  he  must  define  it  for  himself;  no  science  can 
define  it  for  him.  On  the  other  hand,  we  cannot  build 
morality  on  the  foundation  of  ill-defined  purpose,  even 
though  it  clothe  itself  in  the  most  highly  respectable 
form  of  words.  If,  for  example,  the  subject  were  to 
state  that  he  wanted  to  be  a  gentleman,  or  a  Christian, 
or  to  spend  his  life  in  doing  good  to  others,  this  of 
itself  would  offer  no  means  of  guiding  his  moral 
education,  and  the  fear  would  be  well  grounded  that 
vague  aims  of  this  sort  would  produce  at  best  but  a 
feeble  and  mediocre  type  of  character.  But  suppose  he 
were  to  define  his  purpose  thus  :  "  I  want  to  do  good  by 
helping  the  Charity  Organisation  Society" — then  the 
instructor  would  be  in  a  position  to  begin.  And  his 
business  would  be,  not  to  teach  charity  as  an  abstract 
virtue,  but  to  teach  charity  organisation,  with  a  view  to 


308  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

making  his  pupil  the  sanest,  most  level-headed,  best- 
informed  and  most  efficient  charity  organiser.  And 
that  would  be  the  only  kind  of  moral  education  that 
really  met  the  needs  of  the  case. 

Or,  if  the  question  were  whether  the  Humanities, 
or  the  technical  sciences,  provide  the  best  means  of 
educating  character,  again  the  answer  would  depend 
on  the  definite  relation  to  human  purpose  with  which 
these  subjects  may  be  severally  taught.  In  spite  of 
the  high  reputation  the  Humanities  bear  in  this  respect, 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  purposeless  teaching 
of  the  Humanities  is  a  demoralising  form  of  education  ; 
and  that  as  between  new  universities  where  electricity 
and  brewing  are  taught  for  the  purpose  of  making  good 
electricians  and  good  brewers,  and  old  universities  (if 
there  are  any  such)  where  the  Humanities  are  taught 
for  no  purpose  in  particular,  the  new  universities  are 
likely  to  turn  out  better  men.  Of  course  there  is  no 
reason  why  the  Humanities  should  be  taught  without 
purpose ;  though  they  do  seem  to  lend  themselves  very 
readily  to  that  sort  of  teaching.  They  can  be  taught 
as  an  essential  instrument  to  the  making  of  good  citizens, 
and  probably  no  finer  instrument  for  the  purpose  was 
ever  devised.  But  when  one  observes  how  often  they 
are  taught  in  another  manner,  one  can  hardly  refrain 
from  joining  the  outcry  of  those  who  would  sweep 
them  away. 

Finally,  if  it  be  true  that  conduct  is  the  greatest  of 
the  Fine  Arts,  let  us  remember  all  that  this  involves  for 
the  teacher  of  morals.  In  the  Fine  Arts  there  is  only 
one  effective  way  of  showing  how  the  thing  ought  to  be 
done — and  that  is  by  doing  it.  And  the  aim  of  the 
moral   educator,   after  all,  is  to   get  things  done  and 


MORAL   EDUCATION  309 

not  merely  to  impart  information  about  morals. 
The  building  of  character  is  a  very  different  enter- 
prise from  the  building  of  machines,  and  demands 
in  those  who  attempt  it  qualifications  which  are  not 
easily  acquired. 


XIV.— RELIGION 

Religion  is  the  consciousness  of  a  spirit  which  knows 
itself  to  be  one  with  the  Highest.  In  Rehgion  there 
is  and  must  be  something  dogmatic,  authoritative, 
irrevocable,  even  defiant.  What  Religion  announces  is 
a  final  decision,  which  may  not  be  withdrawn,  modified, 
or  made  the  subject  of  negotiation  under  any  circum- 
stances whatever.  It  is  the  soul's  ultimatum.  If  in 
one  sense  Religion  is  the  humblest  of  attitudes,  in  a 
deeper  sense  it  is  the  most  exalted.  It  claims  to 
overcome  the  world  and  to  put  all  things  under  its 
feet.  Religion  is  content  with  nothing  less  than  the 
absolute  submission  of  the  entire  range  of  human 
experience  to  itself.  Opposition  only  quickens  it  into 
completer  self-assertion,  and  the  hour  when  its  foes 
are  most  active  is  the  hour  of  its  firmest  carriage. 
When  the  highest  interests  of  the  soul  are  being  threat- 
ened, and  the  foundations  of  life  are  on  the  point  of 
being  swept  away.  Religion  rises  up  with  an  answering 
menace,  and  delivers  its  ultimatum  in  the  teeth  of  the 
facts.  "For  this  cause,"  it  cries,  "came  I  unto  this 
hour.  Yea,  though  He  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  Him." 
It  is  the  pillar  of  fire  which  burns  at  its  brightest  in  the 
blackest  night.  It  is  the  trumpet-call  of  man's  uncon- 
querable soul  breathing  a  challenge  to  the  armies  of 
doubt,  sorrow,  and  sin. 

The  majesty  of  Religion  is  self-supported,  and  her 

310 


RELIGION  Sll 

authority  is  never  merged  in  that  of  her  ambassadors. 
Her  splendours  are  unadorned,  and  she  needs  no  devices 
of  man's  wit  to  make  her  acceptable.  She  has  no  alter 
ego,  and  refuses  to  be  identified  with  that  which  is  voted 
good  by  the  majority.  She  is  no  member  of  the  Grand 
Committee  of  Human  Interests.  To  pass  off  Religion 
as  Morality,  Art,  Science,  singly  or  together,  is  to 
mistake  the  viceroy  for  the  monarch  and  to  ignore  the 
hiding-place  of  Power.  She  will  not  be  harnessed  to  the 
yoke  of  any  human  purpose  whatsoever,  and  suffers  no 
man  to  commend  her  as  a  thing  that  is  likely  to  please. 

Religion  has  no  fellowship  with  idols ;  is  never  dis- 
guised ;  cannot  be  hidden  under  a  phrase,  nor  revealed 
by  a  dance  of  thin  abstractions.  Of  all  the  idols  that 
usurp  her  place,  those  are  the  vainest  that  are  built  up 
out  of  words.  The  vainest — but  the  most  eagerly  run 
after  in  every  age  that  boasts  enlightenment.  They  are 
set  up  in  the  market-place  ;  they  deck  the  shop-windows 
of  Eloquence ;  men  sell  them  for  money  in  the  House 
of  God.  Religion  weeps  over  these  things  as  Christ 
wept  over  Jerusalem  ;  and  again  she  drives  them  from 
the  Temple  with  a  whip  of  small  cords. 

Before  the  overwhelming  immensities  of  the  universe, 
Religion  alone  remains  unabashed.  The  doom  of  earth 
is  written  in  the  sky ;  human  life,  through  uncounted 
generations,  is  but  a  breath  breathed  forth  into  voids  of 
endless  time ;  the  sun  and  the  planets  short-lived  as  a 
dance  of  fireflies  on  a  summer  night.  All  is  as  nothing. 
To  an  imagination  like  Carlyle's  which  has  opened  its 
arms  to  the  terrors  of  Time  and  Space,  or  looked  upon 
the  Httleness  of  man,  as  Dante's  did,  from  the  empyrean 
height,  there  comes  a  moment  when  Hope  and  Faith 
shrivel  out  of  being  and  the  very  will  to  live  expires. 


312  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

The  soul  is  on  the  point  of  total  collapse  beneath  the 
weight  of  the  everlasting  No. 

Then  it  is,  when  all  seems  lost,  that  the  mighty  heart 
of  Religion  begins  to  beat.  She  knows  that  her  hour 
has  come :  "  Out  of  the  deep,  O  Lord,  I  cried  unto 
Thee,  and  Thou  heardest  me."  None  save  a  being 
infinitely  greater  than  the  world  would  be  aware  of  his 
own  infinite  littleness  within  the  world.  Religion  is 
the  soul  of  that  being.  It  is  the  shock  of  the  entire 
universe  of  sense  that  has  to  be  met ;  the  deeps  of 
immensity  have  poured  out  their  legions,  clad  in  the 
iron  raiment  of  inexorable  law ;  armies  of  negation  are 
encamped  beneath  the  walls  and  battering  at  the  gates. 
This  is  the  challenge ;  and  well  may  we  say  that  all  of 
it  is  needed,  and  nothing  less  would  suffice,  to  stir  the 
soul  of  man  into  that  final  act  of  self-expression  which 
we  call  Religion. 

Unbroken  by  the  cosmic  challenge.  Religion  runs  no 
risk  of  succumbing  to  any  lesser  strain.  Summoned  to 
action  by  the  evils  of  the  human  lot,  she  gathers  en- 
thusiasm from  the  magnitude  of  her  task.  Just  because 
she  is  the  spirit  of  the  Best  she  rises  to  her  greatest 
when  she  knows  and  faces  the  Worst.  Undisguised  in 
her  own  majesty,  she  penetrates  every  disguise  that  is 
used  to  cover  the  malignancy  of  her  foe.  I'hat  evil 
should  be  extenuated  or  proved  not  to  be ;  that  black 
should  be  painted  white  ;  that  the  groaning  and  travail- 
ing of  creation  should  be  hushed  up  or  put  out  of  sight 
— this  is  no  prayer  of  hers.  Things  are  as  they  are; 
new  names  do  not  alter  them  ;  evil  is  evil,  pain  is  pain, 
death  is  death  ;  and  it  is  only  by  accepting  them  in 
their  naked  reality  that  Religion  can  be  true  to  herself 
Let  them  be  what  they  are,  and  she  will  deal   with 


RELIGION  318 

them.  Let  the  sinner  be  a  sinner  and  she  will  put  her 
arms  round  him  ;  let  the  sheep  be  veritably  lost  and  she 
will  recover  them;  let  evil  come  armed  to  the  battle 
and  she  will  draw  her  sword  ;  let  the  gloom  thicken 
and  her  radiance  shall  glow  like  the  noonday ;  let  life  be 
tragic  and  she  will  lift  it  up  among  the  stars. 

"  When  thou  hearest  the  fool  rejoicing,  and  he  saith,  '  It  is  over  and 

past, 
And  the  wrong  was  better  than  right,  and  hate  turns  into  love  at 

the  last. 
And  we  strove  for  nothing  at  all,  and  the  gods  are  fallen  asleep ; 
For  so  good  is  the  world  agrowing  that  the  evil  good  shall  reap ' : — 
Then  loosen  thy  sword  in  the  scabbard  and  settle  the  helm  on  thine 

head, 
For  men  betrayed  are  mighty,  and  great  are  the  wrongfully  dead."  ^ 

It  follows  that  Religion  is  the  deepest  principle  of 
unity  among  men.  The  challenge  she  answers,  the 
burden  she  lifts,  the  shock  she  encounters  and  repels,  is 
one  and  the  same  for  all  men  everywhere.  Wherever 
her  authentic  voice  is  heard,  no  matter  what  its  language, 
we  feel  that  it  speaks  for  us  all ;  the  answer  it  makes  is 
the  answer  we  fain  would  give,  the  battle  it  announces 
is  the  battle  we  are  yearning  to  win.  Religion  may 
speak  in  propositions  to  which  we  cannot  assent ;  may 
practise  rites  we  cannot  join ;  may  build  altars  where 
we  can  lay  no  offering.  But  let  it  once  appear  that 
these  things  represent  the  self-assertion  of  a  soul  that  is 
winning  the  victory  over  the  world — fearless  of  Nature, 
of  Death,  of  Evil,  of  Immensity — and  who  will  not 
thankfully  proclaim  that  his  own  cause  is  being  pleaded 
before  high  heaven?  who  will  not  acknowledge  that 
these  brave  ones  are  holding  the  fort  where  his  own  soul 
standeth  in  jeopardy  ?  Shall  there  not  be  deepest 
blood-brotherhood  between   them  and  us  ?     Shall  not 

1   The  Song  of  Sigurd  the  Volsung. 


314  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

love  go  forth,  unfeigned  and  entire,  towards  these 
masters  of  the  fate  that  threaten  us  all?  Is  it  not 
enough  for  unity  that  all  men  have  one  terror  to  face, 
one  shock  to  encounter,  one  world  to  overcome,  one 
death  to  endure  ?  Are  not  the  ultimate  terms  of  the 
human  compact  wholly  fulfilled  by  any  soul  of  man 
that  shows  us  the  way  in  bearing  up  against  these 
things  ?  Need  we  inquire  into  the  secret  of  his  endur- 
ance and  refuse  to  accept  him  until  he  has  answered — 
when  once  we  have  seen  that  he  endures  ? 

The  spirit  that  is  in  Religion  is  that  of  uncompromising 
loyalty  to  the  Highest.  Its  fealty  is  entire  and  requires 
no  confirmation  by  an  oath.  It  lives  in  the  whole,  loves 
the  whole  with  a  patriot's  devotion,  and  passes  into 
utterance,  or  into  action,  "  with  the  felt  strength  of  the 
universe  at  its  back."  Religion  stands  by  a  Cause ;  but 
this  rests  on  no  reasoning,  for  it  is  the  Cause  of  Reason 
itself.  Religion  is  not  afraid  of  its  future,  suffers  from 
no  sense  of  insecurity,  and  speaks  in  language  that  is 
both  triumphant  and  serene. 

Religion,  therefore,  does  not  apologise  for  itself,  does 
not  stand  on  the  defensive,  does  not  justify  its  presence 
in  the  world.  If  theorists  would  vindicate  Religion, 
they  may  do  so ;  but  Religion  comes  forth  in  the 
majesty  of  silence,  like  a  mountain  amid  the  lifting 
mists.^  All  the  strong  things  of  the  world  are  its 
children ;  and  whatever  strength  is  summoned  to  its 
support  is  the  strength  which  its  own  spirit  has  called 
into  being.  Religion  never  excuses  its  attitude,  and 
when  at  last  a  Voice  is  lifted  up  it  simply  chants  the 
Faith,  until  the  deaf  ears  are  unstopped  and  the  dead 

1  "  The  rest  may  reason,  and  welcome  ;  'tis  we  musicians  know." 

— Abt  Fogler, 


RELIGION  S15 

in  spirit  come  out  of  their  graves  to  listen.  There  is 
nothing  so  masterful ;  and  it  speaks  as  one  who  has  a 
right  to  the  mastery.  It  is  the  major  control  of  thought, 
to  which  all  systems  whatsoever  bear  witness,  either 
silent  or  confessed.  Authority  is  not  what  it  requires, 
but  what  it  confers.  Its  voice  is  peremptory  but  not 
violent,  convincing  but  not  tyrannical,  and  every  truth 
that  it  announces  passes  insensibly  into  a  command. 
Its  indicatives  are  veiled  imperatives ;  and  no  hypo- 
thetical proposition  ever  escapes  from  its  lips.  So  that, 
unless  a  man  is  overborne  by  his  religion,  we  may  truly 
say  his  religion  is  vain. 

Religion  depends  on  no  favourable  conditions.  It  is 
a  vain  thing  when  we  say  one  to  another :  "  Go  to, 
now ;  let  us  make  a  garden  in  a  sunny  spot ;  let  us 
create  a  soft  atmosphere  of  happiness  such  as  Religion 
loves ;  let  us  build  a  mighty  hedge  of  argument  to 
shield  this  tender  plant  from  the  ravages  of  the  east 
wind."  To  argue  thus  is  to  look  at  life  from  the 
wrong  end.  It  is  not  in  man  to  make  Religion 
what  he  would  have  her  be,  but  only  to  be  what 
Religion  is  making  him.  As  weak,  she  makes  him 
strong ;  as  defeated,  victorious ;  as  naked,  she  clothes 
him ;  as  exposed  to  every  desolating  wind,  she  wraps 
her  mantle  around  him  and  he  is  safe.  Were  it  easy 
for  the  natural  man  to  believe  in  God  there  would  be 
no  such  thing  as  Religion ;  were  even  the  argument 
for  morality  a  mere  conclusion  from  premises  there 
would  be  no  such  thing  as  doing  right.  Unless  the 
soul  were  greater  than  its  arguments  it  would  never 
see  the  gaps  in  its  own  logic ;  unless  it  were  mightier 
than  its  deeds  it  would  never  be  aware  of  imperfection ; 
and  it  is  only  as  conscious  in  himself  of  a  Rational  Will 


316  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

which  is  fully  expressed  in  none  of  his  achievements, 
either  of  logic  or  of  life,  that  man  is  able  to  assert 
himself  above  his  failures,  and  bridge  the  gaps  between 
the  actual  and  the  ideal.  **  The  righteous  man,"  says 
Kant,  "  may  say :  I  will  that  there  should  be  a  God ; 
T  will  that,  though  in  this  world  of  natural  necessity, 
I  should  not  be  of  it,  but  should  also  belong  to  a  purely 
intelligible  world  of  freedom ;  finally  I  will  that  my 
duration  should  be  endless.  On  this  faith  I  insist  and 
will  not  let  it  be  taken  from  me." 

To  many  who  have  inherited  the  Christian  temper 
it  may  seem  at  first  sight  that  statements  such  as  these 
are  at  variance  with  the  essential  character  of  the 
spiritual  life.  That  life  is,  before  all  else,  meek  and 
lowly,  gentle  and  peaceable ;  it  vaunteth  not  itself,  is 
not  puffed  up,  is  not  easily  provoked.  Its  note  is  self- 
repression,  not  self-assertion.  The  humble,  the  contrite, 
the  broken-hearted  are  its  chief  exponents,  and  the 
most  perfect  symbol  of  its  spirit  is  the  little  child.  It 
does  not  strive  nor  cry,  nor  smite  with  the  sword ;  its 
language  is  a  prayer  of  submission  and  not  a  challenge ; 
its  deeds  are  the  healing  acts  of  love. 

Such  a  rejoinder  is  true  in  all  that  it  affirms,  and 
false  in  all  that  it  denies.  Every  one  of  the  qualities 
here  affirmed  is  truly  predicated  of  Religion,  and 
Christianity  in  particular  bases  on  them  its  claim  to 
represent  the  highest  stage  in  the  evolution  of  the 
religious  life.  But  these  finer  qualities  are  often  com- 
mended in  language  and  illustrated  by  examples  which 
suggest  that  they  have  their  original  spring  in  some 
weakness  of  the  soul.  They  are,  rather,  the  most 
perfect  fruit  of  the  soul's  strength,  daring,  and  energy. 
Forgetfulness  of  this  has,  perhaps,  done  more  than  all 


RELIGION  317 

other  causes  put  together  to  discredit  Christianity  in 
the  modern  world.  Among  other  damage  it  has  given 
occasion  to  the  invective  of  Nietzsche,  and  to  the  whole 
literature  of  the  self-assertion  of  unconverted  Man. 
The  summit-truths  are  always  the  easiest  to  pervert. 
And  the  doctrine  which  makes  Religion  the  refuge  of 
the  weak,  and  declares  that  only  failures  are  ever 
beaten  to  their  knees,  is  precisely  such  a  perversion. 
For  what  is  self-repression  ?  Is  it  merely  the  turning 
of  one's  back  on  each  particular  object  of  desire,  or 
the  shutting  of  one's  ear  to  every  voice  which  cries 
"  Lo  here,  lo  there  "  ?  Were  it  only  this,  there  would 
be  no  denying  that  in  Nietzsche's  philosophy  Christianity 
has  met  its  overthrow.  But  self-repression  means  in- 
finitely more.  Its  essence  is  not  the  negative  abandon- 
ment of  the  particular,  but  the  dynamic  grasp  of  the 
universal;  not  the  mere  forsaking  of  the  husks,  but 
the  rising  up  in  the  total  strength  of  manhood  and 
the  arduous  climbing  of  the  path  which  was  so  easy 
in  descent.  Self-repression  is  self-assertion — or  it  is 
nothing.  It  represents  the  developing  attack  of  the 
spirit  on  the  Object  of  supreme  desire,  wherein  the 
beggarly  elements  are  not  destroyed  but  transmuted — 
first  compelled  into  unconditional  surrender  and  then 
enlisted  and  taken  up  as  the  working  forces  of  the 
great  design.  The  fruits  of  the  spirit  in  all  their  mild- 
ness and  sweet  reasonableness  are  thus  the  fruits  of 
the  world  that  has  been  overcome  ;  and  the  world  is  not 
overcome  by  running  away  from  its  perishing  shows. 
In  Goethe's  well-known  lines  there  is  one  word  that 
seems  to  bear  the  emphasis  of  this  pleading : 

"  Im  Ganzen,  Guten,  Schonen, 
Resolut  zu  leben." 


818  THE   ALCHEMY   OF   THOUGHT 

The  great-heartedness  of  Religion  craves  expression 
and  must  be  expressed.  There  is  a  moment  in  the 
act  of  worship  when  neither  the  prayer  of  contrition 
nor  the  hymn  of  adoration  will  satisfy,  when  the 
Will  breaks  the  leash  of  constraint  with  which  the 
understanding  has  held  it  back,  and  launches  itself 
in  triumphant  affirmation,  and  with  the  full  force  of 
its  argument  within  it,  against  all  that  is  irrational, 
dark,  or  terrible  in  the  world.  The  precautions  of 
apology  and  self-defence  are  now  abandoned ;  the 
baggage  train  is  emptied  and  left  behind ;  the  soul 
ceases  to  parley  with  Principalities  and  Powers,  and, 
in  a  joy  that  is  free  from  all  fetters,  lifts  on  high 
the  battle-hymn  of  its  faith  with  its  deep  refrain 
of  "I  believe."  This  moment  is  the  very  con- 
summation of  worship,  gathering  into  itself  the 
meaning  of  all  that  has  gone  before,  and  preclud- 
ing a  yet  greater  moment  when  faith  passes  into 
action  and  truth  becomes  a  deed.  When  sincere, 
there  is  nothing  which  so  stirs  the  pulses  of  the 
spiritual  life,  nothing  which  puts  such  power  into  the 
arm  of  the  Good.  Religion,  no  longer  entrenched 
behind  bulwarks,  is  now  seen  marching  into  the  open 
like  an  army  with  banners,  the  Ark  of  the  Cove- 
nant in  the  midst,  and  the  trumpeters  going  on 
before. 

Isaiah  and  Jesus  had  no  other  conception  of  Religion 
than  this.  They  spake  with  authority,  and  the  note 
of  triumph  was  in  their  voices.  When  they  argued  it 
was  unto  conviction.  The  sense  of  power,  dependent 
on  no  temporal  suffrages  whatsoever,  rings  out  in  every 
prophet's  cry.  The  attitude  of  self-defence  is  foreign 
to  the  prophet ;  he  must  always  attack,  must  always 


RELIGION  319 

be  of  good  cheer ;   must  always  go  forth  conquering 
and  to  conquer. 

"  Gladness  be  with  thee.  Helper  of  the  World  ! 
I  think  this  is  the  authentic  sign  and  seal 
Of  Godship,  that  it  ever  waxes  glad, 
And  more  glad,  until  gladness  blossoms,  bursts 
Into  a  rage  to  suffer  for  mankind 
And  recommence  at  sorrow." 

The  attitude  of  self-defence  is  foreign  even  to  the 
makers  of  the  ancient  Creeds.  Their  creeds  have  been 
found  inadequate  to  the  expanding  reason  of  mankind, 
but  their  spirit  has  been  fatally  misunderstood.  They 
have  been  treated  as  having  no  aim  save  that  of  laying 
down  articles  of  agreement  for  the  Church  of  God, 
signed,  sealed,  and  delivered.  Were  that  all,  we  might 
truly  say  that  the  labour  was  vain.  But  they  sought 
to  satisfy  a  deeper  need.  Then  as  now  a  word  was 
wanted  to  sustain  the  courage  and  confirm  the  loyalty 
of  the  marching  host.  In  the  stress  and  difficulty  of 
life,  which  were  more  insistent  for  them  than  they 
now  seem  to  us.  Religion  could  not  be  suffered  to 
lose  confidence  in  itself.  Over  and  over  again  the 
issue  must  be  frankly  faced,  for  it  is  the  issue  of 
life  or  death ;  the  soul  must  be  reminded,  and  again 
reminded,  that  its  ultimatum  has  been  delivered ;  the 
final  decision  must  be  recalled  and  reaffirmed ;  the 
soul's  covenant  with  God  must  be  displayed,  and  the 
will  of  man  recommitted  to  its  clauses  one  by  one. 
Such  was  the  deeper  intention  of  the  ancient  Creeds. 
Would  any  lesser  aim  have  secured  their  survival 
into  an  age  which  has  grown  beyond  them ;  or 
made  it  possible  that  many  good  and  enlightened 
men  should  still  chant  them  in  a  voice  of  triumph 
when,   by   their    own    confession,   they    can    give    an 


320  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

unqualified  assent  to  scarcely  a  single  one  of  the 
propositions  they  utter? 

Theirs  was  not  the  spirit  of  spurious  open-mindedness, 
so  much  in  fashion  nowadays,  which  worships  a  note  of 
interrogation — the  timidity  which  dare  commit  itself  to 
nothing ;  the  half-hearted  religion  which  negotiates  for 
its  status  and  proposes  a  perpetual  parley  with  Doubt, 
Sin,  and  Death.  "  Such,  my  friends,  are  the  principal 
objections  which  Christianity  has  to  encounter  at  the 
present  day,  but  I  venture  to  think  we  need  not 
despair."  Retro  Satanas !  The  lines  have  indeed 
fallen  unto  us  in  a  highly  apologetic  age.  We  apologise 
for  the  highest  things  ;  we  introduce  them  tentatively — 
often  with  a  veiled  implication  that  their  opposites  are 
almost  as  good.  But  if  the  dogmatism  of  the  Creeds  is 
bad,  this  other  extreme  is  infinitely  worse.  How  can 
the  world  fail  to  despise  a  religion  which  is  accompanied 
by  a  perpetual  excuse  for  its  own  existence  ?  The 
world  knows  well  that  the  thing  so  offered  is  not 
Religion  at  all.  Whatsoever  comes  before  man  with 
the  airs  of  a  suppliant  cannot  be  the  Spirit  of  the 
Highest.  It  is  the  devil  who  is  the  prince  of 
apologists,  and  even  he  is  not  always  fawning  for  the 
suffrages  of  his  constituents.  The  Good,  however 
lowly  its  form,  does  not  apologise  for  itself,  nor  creep 
into  the  world  with  an  abashed  countenance  and  an 
air  of  '*  1  hope  1  don't  intrude  ? "  It  stands  on  its 
rights. 

Is  there,  then,  no  need  of  the  Apologist,  no  service 
which  he  can  perform  ?  Most  assuredly  there  is.  Does 
not  Faith,  even  when  most  confident,  demand  a  base 
secure  within  Experience,  and  a  line  of  communications 
kept  open  in  History  ?     Nevertheless  a  time  may  come. 


RELIGION  821 

indeed  has  come,  when  the  base  is  so  distant  and 
indistinct,  and  the  Hnes  of  communication  so  long, 
numerous,  and  confused,  that  their  maintenance  drains 
the  best  energies  of  the  host.  When  these  con- 
ditions arrive,  the  whole  position  becomes  insecure, 
Faith  loses  heart,  and  the  Light  ceases  to  invade 
the  Darkness.  And  weakness  passes  into  decadence 
when,  in  addition,  there  falls  upon  the  Church 
the  task  of  protecting  a  huge  baggage-train,  packed 
with  obsolete  munitions  and  a  mixed  assortment  of 
worldly  goods.  What  ought  to  be  subordinate  now 
becomes  supreme.  The  priest  drives  out  the  prophet ; 
Religion  gives  no  lead  to  life;  laboured  explanation 
displaces  the  word  of  command  ;  the  objective  is  lost 
sight  of ;  the  front  is  forgotten ;  force  is  scattered ; 
loyalty  perishes ;  demoralisation  spreads ;  the  host 
loses  momentum  and  impact ;  strong  men  linger  in  the 
rear  and  quarrel  over  the  spoils  of  ancient  victories. 
The  exclusion  of  Defence  from  the  business  of  the 
Church  is  not  indeed  to  be  thought  of;  but  let  the 
things  defended  be  worth  defending,  and  such  as  are 
really  assailed.  Religion  conserves  nothing  that  it 
cannot  use,  for  it  is,  before  all  else,  a  creative  principle, 
an  active  Good,  an  invasive  Ideal. 

The  loss  of  this  central  conception  is  the  recurrent 
misfortune  of  every  organised  Church,  and  much  of 
the  theological  literature  of  the  present  time  shows 
little  trace  of  its  presence.  The  science  of  Christian 
Apologetics  has  grown  to  enormous  dimensions,  its 
convincingness  inversely  proportional  to  its  mass.  Sects 
even  have  arisen  which  devote  no  small  part  of  the 
resources  at  their  command  to  discovering  a  reason  why 

they   should    exist  —  the    characteristic    occupation   of 

21 


322  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

sectarianism  all  the  world  over.  The  literature  thus 
produced,  whether  in  defence  of  doctrine  or  of  denomi- 
nation, is  not  inspiring  though  it  seems  to  be  popular. 
Many  go  to  church  for  the  purpose  of  hearing  Religion 
defended,  and  explained,  and  placed  on  some  perilous 
footing  of  accommodation  with  alien  things  in  which  they 
really  believe.  There  is  a  strong  disposition  to  meet 
doubt  half  way,  discuss  the  matter  as  an  open  question, 
and  effect  some  kind  of  feeble  compromise.  The 
Churches  have  laid  themselves  out  to  meet  the  demand, 
and  the  weakest  of  them  all  are  the  most  apologetic. 


XV.— IS  THE  MORAL  SUPREMACY  OF 
CHRISTENDOM  IN  DANGER?^ 

If  there  is  any  considerable  number  of  Christian 
thinkers  who  habitually  take  due  account  of  the 
meaning  of  the  great  non- Christian  religions,  I  must 
confess  that  the  fact  has  escaped  my  observation.^  That 
the  extent  to  which  these  religions  prevail  has  been 
accurately  measured  by  Foreign  Missionary  Societies 
I  do  not  doubt ;  but  that  their  accuracy  of  measure- 
ment has  always  been  accompanied  by  intelligent  com- 
prehension of  the  thing  measured  is  not  so  clear.  Nor 
do  I  overlook  the  splendid  labours  of  Oriental  scholars 
— Max  M tiller,  Rhys  Davids,  Legge,  Estlin  Carpenter, 
and  others  in  this  country  alone :  they  leave  us  all  with 
no  excuse  for  ignorance.  But  although  the  work  of 
these  thinkers  deserves  to  be  ranked  among  the  great 
achievements  of  modern  science,  and  although,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  they  have  a  close  bearing  on  the  problems 
of  the  Christian  consciousness,  the  fact  remains  that 
in  modifying  the  general  form  of  Christianity  they  have 
effected  next  to  nothing.^ 

1  This  essay  was  published  in  The  Hibhert  Journal  at  the  conclusion  of 
the  Russo-Japanese  war.  As  the  question  to  which  it  relates  has  lost 
none  of  its  importance  in  the  interval,  the  essay  is  here  republished. 

2  M.  Loisy,  and  the  Modernists  generally,  form  a  conspicuous 
exception. 

3  They  have  at  least  made  incredible  the  doctrine  of  exclusive 
salvation,  though  this,  to  the  scandal  of  Christendom,  still  remains  in 
the  formularies. 

823 


324  THE    ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

In  its  earliest  stages  Christianity  displayed  a  won- 
derful power  of  assimilating  elements  from  the  various 
pagan  religions,  Greek,  Roman,  and  Gothic,  with  which 
the  new  teaching  came  in  contact,  and  this  power  of 
assimilation  in  early  days  has  been  upheld  by  some  as 
one  of  the  surest  proofs  of  the  divine  mission  of  the 
Gospel.  But  how  much  has  modern  Christianity 
assimilated  from  Buddhism,  either  through  actual 
contact  in  the  countries  where  this  religion  prevails, 
or  through  the  efforts  of  our  own  scholars  to  make 
its  teachings  intelligible  to  the  Western  minds?  I 
question  indeed  if  many  of  us  could  honestly  claim 
to  have  adjusted  the  perspective  of  our  Christian 
thinking  to  the  elementary  fact  that  there  are  five 
^  hundred  million  Buddhists  in  the  world,^  and  that  the 
followers  of  Buddha  greatly  outnumber  the  followers 
of  Christ. 

Not  even  yet  has  the  truth  of  the  Copernican 
astronomy  become  thoroughly  soaked  into  the  sub- 
stance of  Christian  thought.  When  Milton  wrote 
Paradise  Lost  he  found  it  inconvenient  to  work  that 
theory  into  the  framework  of  his  poem,  and  accord- 
ingly he  did  not  make  the  attempt.  To-day  we  may 
observe  a  similar  attitude  in  the  minds  of  Christian 
thinkers  towards  the  stupendous  facts  of  the  non- 
Christian  religions.  Those  facts  cannot  be  fitted  in 
with  the  scenic  framework  of  popular  Christianity  ;  and 
many  of  our  theologians  seem  content,  like  Milton  in 
the  other  case,  to  simply  leave  them  out  of  the  account. 
They  do  so  not  in  wilful  blindness,  but  from  a  defect  of 

1  This  is  the  reckoning  of  Dr  Rhys  Davids.  It  is  questioned  by 
Dr  Legge ;  on  grounds,  however,  which  do  not  convince  me.  See 
Legge,  Fd-hieuy  Preface. 


THE   MORAL  SUPREMACY   OF  CHRISTENDOM     825 

imagination.  The  facts  in  question,  like  the  truths  of 
Copernican  astronomy,  are  on  a  scale  so  vast  as  to  baffle 
the  mind.  Their  meaning  is  so  subversive  of  prejudice, 
and  so  little  in  keeping  with  our  customary  environ- 
ment, that  the  human  mind  is  unable  to  grasp  their 
significance  all  at  once  ;  and  thus  they  remain  un- 
noticed, because  the  sweep  of  our  thought  is  not  wide 
enough  to  compass  them. 

Even  those  Christian  thinkers  who  not  only  know 
of  the  existence  of  these  religions — this  we  all  may 
be  supposed  to  do  —  but  are  acquainted  with  their 
history  and  doctrines,  are  none  too  eager  to  bring  this 
knowledge  into  relation  with  current  beliefs.  In  conse- 
quence of  this  oversight  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say 
that  the  larger  half  of  Christian  Apologetic  needs  to 
be  re-written.  How  many  of  our  current  arguments 
require  modification,  in  view  of  the  existence  of  the 
non- Christian  religions ;  how  often  is  one  tempted  to 
say  that  such  and  such  a  theory  of  human  salvation 
would  be  flagrantly  untrue  if  the  five  hundred  million 
Buddhists  were  allowed  to  be  human;  and  how  often 
does  this  criticism  provoke  answers  which  show  that 
the  minds  of  apologists  are  unprepared  for  the  reference 
— so  unprepared,  indeed,  as  to  find  it  superfluous  or 
even  irritating.  This  again  is  no  cause  for  surprise. 
For  centuries  past  there  has  been  so  little  foreign 
interference  in  the  course  of  Christian  thought  that 
the  mere  possibility  of  its  occurrence  has  passed  out 
of  sight.  What  wonder,  then,  if  Christian  thinkers 
regard  the  reference  to  Buddhism  as  a  needlessly 
disturbing  element, — an  impertinent  intrusion  of  the 
foreigner,  of  which  they  are  in  no  sense  bound  to  take 
account?     That  men  should  refuse  to  recognise  plain 


326  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

truth  until  the  thunder  of  cannon  has  dinned  it  into 
their  heads  is,  indeed,  no  new  thing. 

The  early  history  of  Christianity  was  largely  deter- 
mined, as  every  student  knows,  by  causes  external  to 
Christendom.  The  fall  of  Jerusalem  before  the  Roman 
arms,  the  contact  of  dispersed  Judaism  with  the  thought 
of  Greece,  the  break-up  of  the  Roman  empire,  the 
southward  march  of  the  Goths,  the  pressure  of  the 
Saracenic  hosts  from  the  East,  the  rediscovery  of 
Aristotle's  philosophy — who  shall  say  how  much  both 
of  the  doctrine  and  polity  of  Christendom  is  due  to 
these  causes  ?  One  has  only  to  open  the  pages  of 
Justin  and  TertuUian,  or,  in  modern  literature,  to  read 
the  story  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  as  told  by  Mr 
Bryce,  to  realise  at  once  how  the  main  lines  for  the 
development  of  Christendom  were  formed  by  its  action 
and  reaction  with  forces  external  and  foreign  to  itself. 
It  is,  however,  a  remarkable  fact,  and  one  which,  so 
far  as  I  know,  has  not  been  sufficiently  weighed,  that 
this  process  of  interaction  with  foreign  elements  has  for 
several  centuries  almost  entirely  ceased.  Since  the 
armed  aggressions  of  Islam  were  finally  checked, 
Christendom  has  lived  secure  within  her  own  borders  ; 
there  has  been  no  development  through  the  reaction  of 
non-Christian  forces  ;  there  has  been  no  assimilation  of 
non-Christian  ideas ;  there  has  been  no  challenge  from 
the  outside  world ;  there  has  been  no  external  standard  by 
which  the  Church  could  measure  either  her  faith  or  her 
works.  Herself  the  judge  of  others,  she  has  been  judged 
by  none.  We  may  survey  a  longer  period,  and  say 
that  for  more  than  eight  hundred  years  Christianity  has 
been  unaffected  by  any  event  in  the  world's  history  the 
consequences  of  which  to  the  Church  can  for  a  moment 


THE   MORAL   SUPREMACY   OF   CHRISTENDOM     827 

be  compared  with  those  which  followed  the  fall  of 
Jerusalem,  or  the  invasion  of  the  Goths,  or  the  redis- 
covery of  the  teachings  of  Aristotle.  Her  evolution 
during  this  time  has  been  rapid,  but  it  has  been  self- 
contained.  Political  changes  no  doubt  have  played  a 
large  part  in  shaping  her  fortunes,  but  these  changes 
took  place  among  races  she  had  already  conquered  and 
in  territory  that  was  already  her  own.  Science,  clas- 
sical learning,  and  biblical  criticism  have  thrown  doubt 
upon  many  of  her  formulas,  but  it  was  science,  learning, 
and  criticism  to  which  her  own  deeper  spirit  had  given 
birth  :  action  and  reaction  among  her  own  component 
elements  has  been  incessant,  and  productive  of  extra- 
ordinary results  ;  this  stream  of  Christian  thought  has 
met  and  mingled  with  that;  this  part  of  Christen- 
dom has  won  supremacy  over  others ;  but  Christianity 
as  a  whole  has  been  unvisited  by  any  shock  from 
without,  and  the  day  seemed  passed  for  ever  when, 
as  a  whole,  she  had  to  give  account  of  herself  before 
the  world. 

But  now,  in  spite  of  all  our  assumptions,  it  seems 
likely  that  Christianity  is  about  to  experience  a  return 
of  the  conditions  she  had  to  face  at  the  beginning.  For 
the  first  time  in  the  course  of  many  centuries  she  has 
received  a  series  of  shocks  from  without.  A  new 
development,  outside  her  own  borders,  has  taken  place 
in  the  world's  history,  the  peculiar  significance  of  which, 
for  her,  lies  in  this:  that  it  affects  not  this  or  that 
element  of  her  teaching,  but  her  claim  to  be  the  uni- 
versal teacher  of  mankind.  Christendom,  as  a  whole, 
long  accustomed  to  treat  all  pagan  races  as  morally 
inferior  to  herself,  now  stands  confronted  by  a  non- 
Christian    civilisation,    of    vast    power    and    splendid 


328  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

promise,  whose  claim  to  moral  equality,  at  least,  can- 
not be  disregarded,  except  by  those  who  are  morally 
blind.  Through  the  rise  of  Japan  a  fresh  term  of 
comparison  has  come  into  existence  in  the  presence  of 
which  the  self-estimates  of  all  Christian  nations  and 
of  Christianity  itself  will  have  to  be  revised.  What 
the  labour  of  scholars  could  not  effect  is  thus  being 
brought  to  accomplishment  by  the  march  of  events  :  the 
religions  of  the  Far  East  have  ceased  to  be  a  curious 
phenomenon  in  our  eyes,  and  appear  as  a  factor  of 
immense  potency  in  the  moral  development  of  the  race ; 
a  new  era  has  opened  in  the  comprehension  of  the  East 
by  the  West ;  a  new  environment  has  been  created  for 
Christianity  as  such  ;  and  it  is  as  certain  as  anything 
can  be  in  this  world,  that  the  evolution  of  the  Christian 
religion  will  no  longer  be  self-contained,  but  will  have 
to  adjust  its  inner  relations  to  the  fresh  outer  relations 
created  by  these  surprising  events. 

The  hold  of  Christianity  upon  the  peoples  of  the 
Western  world  is  rooted  in  the  conviction  that  this  is 
the  religion  which  produces  the  best  men.  To  a  greater 
degree  than  is  commonly  recognised,  each  church  or 
sect  of  Christendom  thus  derives  its  confidence  from 
the  final  court  of  ethical  appeal.  Whatever  ground 
be  alleged  for  a  given  doctrine,  whether  of  Scripture, 
Authority,  or  Reason,  the  argument  would  instantly  lose 
its  force  if  it  were  to  appear  that  the  ethical  result  of 
denying  the  doctrine  was  superior  to  that  which  followed 
its  acceptance.  Unless  a  man  felt  that  he  was  ethically 
better  for  his  belief,  he  would  not — he  could  not — 
believe  at  all ;  and  no  one  in  his  senses  would  seek  to 
convert   another  to   any   form   of  religion   which   was 


THE   MORAL  SUPREMACY   OF  CHRISTENDOM    329 

known  to  be  morally  injurious.  Implicit,  therefore, 
in  the  fact  of  our  being  Christians  at  all,  is  the  con- 
viction that  there  is  no  other  religion  which  produces 
higher  character  or  better  men.  In  support  of  this  it 
is  enough  to  quote  the  words  of  the  Bishop  of  Ripon  in 
the  Hibbert  Journal  for  April  1905  : — 

"  Assent  to  a  proposition  or  belief  in  a  fact  may  enter  into 
consideration  in  a  discussion  on  matters  of  belief  ....  but  unless 
they  can  ally  themselves  with  some  ethical  quality  or  principle 
they  will  entirely  fail  in  evolving  anything  that  can  rightly  be 
called  faith.  In  other  words,  the  creed,  whatever  it  is,  must  make 
an  ethical  response  if  it  is  to  become  a  spiritual  power.  The  only 
avenue  to  spiritual  conviction  is  an  ethical  one ;  .  .  .  .  without 
the  sanction  of  the  moral  nature  there  is  no  faith."*' 

Accepting  the  ethical  test  in  the  sense  indicated  by 
the  Bishop,  I  submit  the  following  question: — How 
would  the  general  status  of  Christianity  be  affected 
by  the  appearance  in  the  world  of  a  religion  which 
should  stand  the  test  better  than  itself?  Or,  slightly 
varying  the  terms  of  the  problem,  let  us  suppose  that 
a  race  of  non- Christian  men  should  appear  who,  when 
judged  by  accepted  standards  of  character,  should  be 
at  once  pronounced  the  moral  superiors  of  the  Christian 
races.  I  am  far  from  asserting  that  such  a  thing  has 
happened  ;  I  offer  the  question  in  a  strictly  hypothetical 
form — how  would  Christianity  stand  affected  if  it  were 
to  happen  ?  The  answer  is  that  the  whole  edifice  would 
be  shaken  to  its  very  foundations.  Not  the  united  zeal 
and  ingenuity  of  all  the  doctors  of  Christendom  could 
secure  the  Church  against  the  shock  of  the  discovery 
that  another  religion  produced  better  nations  and  better 
men.  That  we  should  all  hasten  to  become  adherents 
of  this  other  religion  does  not  follow,  but  we  should  at 


330  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

once  be  compelled  to  re-examine  and  perhaps  reform 
our  own.  All  differences  among  ourselves  would  be 
merged  in  a  common  insignificance.  As  the  wild 
creatures  of  the  prairie  suspend  their  wars  when  they 
scent  the  fumes  of  the  oncoming  fire — as  the  pursuer 
forgets  his  chase  and  the  victim  his  flight,  as  the  panther 
and  the  hart  seek  a  common  hiding-place  from  destruc- 
tion— so  would  it  be  with  us  and  with  our  controversies 
in  the  day  when  this  thing  should  come  to  pass.  Reason 
and  Authority,  Christian  metaphysics  and  Christian 
evidence,  dogma  and  apology,  Catholic  and  Protestant, 
Churchman  and  Dissenter — of  what  consequence  would 
these  distinctions  be  in  face  of  the  advent  of  another 
religion  which  produced  better  men  ?  The  defence  and 
the  propagation  of  Christianity  would  alike  come  to  a 
dead  stop.  The  Church  could  no  longer  chant  her 
favourite  text  about  the  gates  of  hell,  for  she  would  be 
stricken  utterly  dumb. 

But — be  it  said  in  passing — this  dismay  would  have 
a  short  duration.  Soon  the  question  would  be  asked : 
What  has  Christ  himself  to  say  to  these  new  conditions, 
and  how  does  He  bid  us  greet  their  appearance  ?  Then 
would  flash  upon  the  Church  the  full  meaning  of  those 
much-neglected  words — '*  neither  in  this  mountain  nor 
yet  at  Jerusalem."  It  would  be  seen  that  the  coming 
of  this  new  religion  was  nothing  other  than  a  second 
advent  of  the  Universal  Christ  himself  Fears  would 
give  place  to  rejoicing ;  frowns  to  the  look  of  welcome  ; 
the  faithful  would  resume  their  labours  ;  the  spirit  of 
exclusiveness  would  vanish,  and  a  Christian  Religion, 
worthy  of  its  name — a  genuine  Open  Brotherhood  of 
the  children  of  the  Spirit — might  at  last  appear  in 
the  world. 


THE   MORAL  SUPREMACY   OF  CHRISTENDOM     331 

The  bare  supposition  that  a  religion  capable  of  pro- 
ducing higher  character  than  the  Christian  could  ever 
rise  into  existence  may  still  seem  to  some  a  monstrous, 
if  not  a  profane,  hypothesis.  For  centuries  past  nothing 
has  occurred,  as  we  have  said,  to  shake  the  confidence 
of  Christians  in  the  moral  superiority  of  their  own  to 
all  other  forms  of  religion.  Hence  it  has  come  to  be 
regarded  as  in  the  nature  of  things  impossible  that 
this  confidence  should  ever  be  challenged.  There  are 
those  to  whom  the  propounding  of  the  above  hypothesis 
will  be  like  asking  what  would  happen  if  the  laws  of 
thought  were  abolished,  or  the  multiplication  table 
found  to  be  untrue.  It  is  difficult  indeed  to  find 
language  which  adequately  describes  the  confidence  of 
Christendom  in  its  moral  superiority,  or  the  inveteracy 
with  which  that  confidence  has  entered  into  Christian 
thought.  We  are  here  dealing  with  one  of  those 
unconscious  habits  of  mind  which  are  the  most  difficult 
to  call  to  account.  But,  be  the  assumption  true  or 
false,  we  can  at  least  assure  ourselves  that  it  has  not 
been  unattended  by  evil.  The  easy  notion  that  Chris- 
tians are  necessarily  the  best  sort  of  men  has  not  helped 
Christendom  to  see  the  eternal  necessity  to  make  her- 
self better.  That  some,  perhaps  much,  of  the  moral 
failure  which  is  the  disgrace  of  Western  civilisation 
must  be  set  down  to  this  cause,  does  not,  in  my  opinion, 
admit  of  a  moment's  doubt.  Dreaming  on  in  the 
unchallenged  security  of  one  who  has  no  rival  to  fear, 
the  mind  of  Christendom  has  wandered  far  from  the 
eternal  truth  at  the  fountainhead,  and  vast  energies 
have  been  wasted  on  irrelevance  which  were  sorely 
needed  for  the  betterment  of  the  world.  Meanwhile 
an  enemy  has  been  sowing  tares. 


THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

Hard,  however,  as  the  effort  will  seem  to  many,  it 
has  now  become  the  duty  of  Christendom  to  realise 
that  her  hold  on  the  moral  supremacy  of  the  world  is 
not  so  secure  as  many  of  us  imagine.  There  is  room, 
nay,  opportunity,  for  a  rival  candidate.  That  the 
Christian  ideal  of  moral  excellence  is  splendid,  even 
unsurpassed,  no  one  doubts.  But  no  less  certain,  no 
less  striking,  is  the  failure  of  the  West  to  justify  that 
ideal,  both  in  national  and  private  life.  The  sense  of 
dissatisfaction  which  this  failure  has  produced  has 
entered  deep  into  the  moral  consciousness  of  Christians 
all  the  world  over ;  and  if  the  impression  has  been  deep 
in  the  case  of  those  who  profess  and  call  themselves 
Christians,  it  has  been  yet  deeper  with  the  multitudes 
who  have  turned  their  backs  on  the  Church.  I  rate 
this  feeling  among  the  greatest  of  the  forces  now 
moving  the  minds  of  men.  Other  things  may  create 
a  louder  noise,  but  this  works  revolutions.  The  ques- 
tion of  theological  standards  is  being  merged  into  that  of 
moral  consistency,  and  we  are  being  summoned,  as  never 
before,  to  find  the  correspondence  between  our  profes- 
sions and  our  lives.  Such  a  state  of  things  exposes 
Christendom  to  a  rival  challenge,  and  marks  the  fitting 
moment  for  another  claimant  to  appear  on  the  scene. 
If  outside  the  pale  of  Christendom  there  should  arise 
the  example  of  a  saner,  nobler,  more  rational,  more 
joyous,  more  humane,  more  self-controlled  life  than  the 
West  has  so  far  achieved,  the  minds  of  men  are  pre- 
pared to  greet  its  appearance  as  a  divine  fulfilment  of 
the  urgent  needs  of  mankind. 

Nor  would  such  an  event  be  without  its  parallel 
in  the  past.  The  confidence  of  Christendom  in  the 
inalienable  supremacy  of  its  moral  position  is  the  repro- 


THE   MORAL   SUPREMACY   OF   CHRISTENDOM     333 

d  action  on  a  large  scale  of  that  view  of  their  status  in 
the  world's  history  which  the  Jews  held  in  the  time  of 
St  Paul.  Among  the  many  things  which  Christians 
have  inherited  from  Jews  is  the  unquestioning  conviction 
that  they  are  the  chosen  people  of  the  Lord.  Based  on 
different  assumptions  in  the  two  cases,  it  may  perish  in 
the  second  from  the  same  cause  which  destroyed  its 
logic  in  the  first.  It  may  be  cast  out  in  the  process 
of  moral  evolution.  And  certainly  there  is  much  in 
the  present  state  of  the  world  which  might  incline 
a  religious  man  to  regard  such  an  issue  as  more  than 
possible.  The  faithlessness  of  Christendom  to  its  own 
moral  ideal  has  indeed  been  so  obstinate,  so  long- 
continued,  so  unashamed,  that  one  might  well  look 
for  the  call  and  election  of  a  more  "faithful  nation" 
as  among  the  decrees  of  a  just  Providence.  What 
can  be  more  closely  applicable  to  modern  Christians 
than  the  words  in  which  St  Paul  addressed  the 
Judaizers  of  Rome  ? 

"There  is  no  respect  of  persons  with  God.  .  .  .  But  if  thou 
bearest  the  name  of  a  Jew  and  restest  upon  the  law  and  gloriest 
in  God,  and  knowest  his  will,  and  approvest  the  things  that  are 
excellent,  being  instructed  out  of  the  law,  and  art  confident  that 
thou  thyself  art  a  guide  of  the  blind,  a  light  of  them  that  are  in 
darkness,  a  corrector  of  the  foolish,  a  teacher  of  babes,  ....  thou 
therefore  that  teachest  another,  teachest  thou  not  thyself?  Thou 
that  preachest  a  man  should  not  steal,  dost  thou  steal?  Thou 
that  sayest  a  man  should  not  commit  adultery,  dost  thou  commit 
adultery  ?  Thou  that  abhorrest  idols,  dost  thou  rob  temples  ? 
Thou  who  gloriest  in  the  law,  through  thy  transgression  of  the  law 
dishonourest  thou  God  ?  For  the  name  of  God  is  blasphemed 
among  the  Gentiles  because  of  you"  (Rom.  ii.  11-24). 

If  any  reader  should  conclude  from  what  has  been 
said   that   I   regard    the   rise    of  Japan   as  the   most 


334  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

important  event  in  religious  history  since  the  call  of  the 
Gentiles,  he  will  so  far  correctly  understand  my  drift. 
But  if  he  takes  this  as  a  prophecy  that  Christianity  will 
fall  and  Buddhism  rise  into  its  place,  he  will  do  violence 
both  to  the  letter  and  the  spirit  of  the  argument.  I 
make  no  prediction  whatever.  The  contention  is 
that  a  serious  challenge  to  the  moral  hegemony  of 
Christendom  is  not,  a  pnori,  impossible ;  that  such  a 
challenge  has  actually  been  offered ;  that  Buddhism, 
represented  for  the  moment  by  Japan,  is  even  now  in 
the  field  as  a  claimant  for  that  position  which  the  vast 
majority  of  Christians  regard  as  the  indisputable  birth- 
right of  their  own  religion.^  What  verdict  history  will 
finally  pass  upon  this  claim  no  one  can  tell,  no  one 
should  try  to  tell.  Enough  for  the  present  that  the 
claim  has  arisen ;  that  it  lacks  no  element  of  serious- 
ness ;  that  it  has  been  forced  on  the  attention  of  the 
world  in  a  fact-language  which  admits  of  no  mistake. 

Since  the  Russo-Japanese  war  of  1903-5,  the  poten- 
tates of  Europe  have  found  reason  to  think  twice  before 
shaking  their  mailed  fists  in  the  face  of  the  Far  East. 
But  not  for  her  guns  alone,  nor  the  way  she  handles 
them,  is  Japan  to  be  feared.  The  "  Yellow  PeriV  is 
an  ethical  phenomenon.  Far  more  significant  than 
the  efficiency  of  Japanese  arms  is  the  advent  into  the 
world's  history  of  a  people  possessed  of  a  disciplined 
will  in  combination  with  the  highest  order  of  intelligence. 
An  observer  has  declared  that  the  greatest  brains  in  all 

1  "  If  I  were  asked  whether  there  is  any  one  of  the  great  estabUshed 
religions  from  which  it  is  possible  that  a  conception  of  the  world- 
problem  could,  in  our  time,  come,  I  should  look  perhaps  to  Buddhism." 
— Graham  Wallas,  Religion  and  Empire,  reported  in  the  Inquirer, 
June  29,  1901. 


THE   MORAL   SUPREMACY   OF  CHRISTENDOM     335 

the  world  are  to  be  found  at  this  moment  in  Japan.  But 
a  great  brain  is  no  guarantee  of  efficiency  ;  isolated  from 
other  gifts,  it  may  even  become  the  ruin  of  its  possessor. 
This  divorce,  however,  does  not  exist  in  Japan  ;  her 
purpose  and  her  intelligence  are  one.  She  has  shown 
herself  great  not  only  in  conceiving  her  ends  but  in  pur- 
suing them  ;  she  has  poured  her  energies  into  her  ideals. 
Thus  she  rises  up  in  possession  of  all  that  we  mean  by 
character ;  and  it  is  in  the  strength  of  character  rather 
than  in  the  strength  of  arms  that  she  now  challenges 
the  world. 

Praise  of  Japanese  virtue  is  superfluous.  But  none 
the  less  a  prudent  man  will  not  cease  to  observe  the 
facts,  nor  grow  weary  in  his  study  of  their  meaning. 
He  will  be  quick  to  notice  that  Japan  has  all  along 
been  impressing  Europe  by  qualities  higher  than  those 
which  pertain  to  martial  valour.  To  very  many  persons 
— I  think  to  the  masses  of  the  people — it  appeared  that 
Japan  in  her  hour  of  trial  showed  a  degree  of  calmness, 
moderation,  self-restraint,  and  dignity  which  are  strange 
to  the  working  moral  standards  of  Europe,  and  beyond 
what  we  have  been  accustomed  to  expect.  Her  armies 
and  navies  taught  the  world  many  lessons  in  the 
making  of  war,  and  she  won  an  equal  glory  by  showing 
how  the  people  who  stay  at  home  should  behave  them- 
selves while  the  war  is  being  made.  By  what  she 
refrained  from  doing,  no  less  than  by  what  she  did, 
she  deserved  our  respect.  In  no  act  of  that  appalHng 
drama  did  she  allow  herself  to  play  to  the  gallery. 
She  did  not  make  a  spectacle  of  her  fight  for  life ;  she 
encouraged  no  reporters  to  witness  the  shedding  of 
heroic  blood ;  but,  as  though  some  terrible  operation 
of  surgery  were  in  progress,  she  repulsed  the  sightseer 


386  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

and  locked  the  door.  In  all  these  respects  she  did  not 
copy  an  example  previously  given,  but  set  a  new 
example  to  the  civilised  world. 

How  deep  this  impression  sunk  in  the  minds  of 
Western  peoples,  how  far  it  has  already  compelled  an 
unconscious  process  of  readjustment  among  inveterate 
mental  habits,  has  yet  to  be  discovered,  but  it  will 
scarcely  be  doubted  that  the  impression  went  very 
deep,  and  that  great  changes  are  bound  to  follow  in 
many  of  our  accepted  ways  of  thought.  The  working 
classes  of  our  own  country  in  particular,  never  prone 
to  rate  too  highly  either  the  bona  fides  of  their 
religious  instructors  or  the  practical  value  of  the  in- 
struction given,  undoubtedly  found  here  a  new  reason 
for  distrusting  the  moral  efficacy  of  the  Christian 
religion.  And  not  among  the  working  classes  only, 
but  everywhere,  one  may  observe  a  growing  readiness 
to  compare  the  respective  moral  harvests  of  the  East 
and  the  West,  with  the  result  that  Western  society 
sees  with  cleared  vision  the  scantiness  of  the  domestic 
crop  and  the  general  nakedness  of  the  land.  A  new 
point  has  been  given  to  the  arrows  of  the  sceptic :  has 
he  not  indeed  been  provided  with  a  new  poison  for  his 
barbs?  The  astounding  divorce  between  the  ethical 
ideals  of  Christendom  and  its  normal  practice ;  the  liberty 
of  interpretation  with  which  the  first  principles  of 
Christian  morality  are  misapplied  to  our  social  life ; 
the  freedom,  amounting  to  effrontery,  with  which  one 
thing  is  professed  and  the  opposite  practised ;  the  dis- 
graceful sophisms  by  which  the  Christian  conscience  is 
taught  to  be  blind  to  its  own  faithlessness — these  and 
many  other  truths  of  a  like  nature,  once  apprehended 
only  by  a  small  and  neglected  company,  were  during 


THE   MORAL  SUPREMACY   OF   CHRISTENDOM     337 

those  three  years  revealed  in  their  true  colours  to  tens 
of  thousands  of  persons  who  never  thought  of  them 
before.  Who  can  doubt  that  the  crisis  which  has  so 
long  been  in  preparation  for  Christianity  has  been 
brought  appreciably  nearer  by  these  things — so  near, 
perhaps,  as  to  be  even  now  at  the  doors? 

To  explain  the  moral  character  displayed  by  Japan  as 
due  to  the  stimulus  of  a  crisis  in  her  history  is,  at  least, 
to  show  an  astonishing  ignorance  of  human  nature.  A 
nation  unprovided  with  character  to  begin  with  would 
be  unnerved,  distracted,  paralysed  by  such  a  crisis.  No 
menace  to  the  life  of  a  people  can  at  a  moment's  notice 
summon  into  being  the  qualities  with  which  Japan  won 
the  admiration  of  mankind — the  far-reaching  purpose, 
the  grasp  of  conditions  needed  for  its  fulfilment,  the 
unswerving  pursuit  of  the  goal,  the  combination  of 
millions  of  wills  into  one,  and  the  readiness  to  endure 
every  sacrifice  at  the  call  of  duty.  The  explanation  lies 
deeper — deeper  perchance  than  our  analysis  can  reach. 
In  offering  such  an  explanation  here  1  make  no  pretence 
to  be  exhaustive,  and  am  well  aware  that  none  of 
the  reasons  I  am  about  to  give  would  have  validity  if 
separated  from  one  another,  or  even  if  taken  out  of 
the  general  context  of  life  in  the  Far  East. 

1.  Religion. — Interpretations  of  Oriental  religions  by 
Western  scholars  need,  as  a  rule,  to  be  accepted  with 
some  reserve.^  The  wine  of  the  East  is  apt  to  become 
water  when  transferred  to  the  bottles  of  the  West.     In 


1  This  difficulty  no  doubt  applies  to  the  Western  interpretation  of 
the  Bible^  which  we  can  never  too  often  remind  ourselves  is  an 
Oriental  book.  But  in  our  attempts  to  understand  the  Bible  we  of 
the  West  have  enjoyed  an  exceptional  advantage,  from  the  circum- 
stance that  we  have  always  had  the  Jews  at  our  elbows. 

22 


THE  ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

the  case  of  Buddhism,  however,  there  are  one  or  two 
features  of  extreme  interest  which  may  be  described 
without  undue  risk  of  error.  Buddhism,  unhke  our 
Christianity,  is  a  cosmocentric  rehgion.  The  universe, 
instead  of  being  conceived  as  the  theatre  or  scene  of  the 
human  drama  is  itself  the  one  drama,  outside  of  which 
there  is  no  action,  no  hfe,  no  being.  The  individual, 
who  constitutes  the  central  concern  of  Christian 
thought,  is  nothing  to  Buddhism:  his  individuahty  is 
an  illusion.  Such  a  view  of  human  life,  we  have  been 
accustomed  to  think,  must  be  in  the  highest  degree 
unfavourable  to  the  development  of  character,  inasmuch 
as  it  seems  to  sap  the  source  of  individual  endeavour, 
and  to  substitute  a  state  of  apathy  for  the  spirit  of  keen 
interest  in  the  things  of  the  world.  The  profound  error 
of  this  conclusion  ought  now  to  be  manifest  to  Christen- 
dom. The  spirit  of  Buddhism,  entering  into  the  life- 
blood  of  Japan,  has  produced  an  ethical  result  of  a 
character  exactly  opposite  to  that  which  we  have  been 
accustomed  to  expect.  Instead  of  crippling  individual 
endeavour,  it  has  checked  the  operation  of  personal  selfish- 
ness^— the  chief  source  of  the  ughness,  the  misery,  the 
wickedness  of  the  civilisation  of  the  West.  By  so  doing 
Buddhism  has  not  indeed  directly  produced  any  virtue, 
but  it  has  prepared  the  soil  on  which  many  virtues 
might  be  cultivated.  The  citizen,  freed  from  the 
obstructing  vision  of  his  own  importance,  can  discern 
the  meaning  of  his  duty  and  his  ideal,  and,  surrendering 

^  It  is  not  here  forgotten  that  other  elements  besides  Buddhism 
enter  into  the  religion  of  Japan.  I  count  Japan  a  Buddhist  nation  for 
the  reasons  and  with  the  reservations  given  by  Dr  Rhys  Davids  {Bud- 
dhism, ch.  i.  and  p.  142),  and  I  attribute  to  the  operation  of  the 
Buddhist  spirit  precisely  what  is  contained  in  the  italicised  clause. 


THE   MORAL  SUPREMACY   OF  CHRISTENDOM      339 

himself  to  that,  reach  a  high  level  of  moral  vigour  and 
efficiency. 

2.  Education. — The  Japanese  system  of  education  has 
an  ethical  aim  :  it  is  a  system  v^hich  educates  character. 

"  Education  is  compulsory.  Every  child  on  attaining  the  age  of 
six  must  attend  a  common  elementary  school  where  instruction  is 
given  in  morals,  reading,  writing,  arithmetic,  the  rudiments  of 
technical  work,  gymnastics,  and  poetry.  If  a  child  after  graduating 
at  a  common  elementary  school  desires  to  extend  its  education,  it 
passes  to  a  common  middle  school,  where  training  is  given  for 
practical  pursuits  and  for  admission  to  higher  educational  institu- 
tions. The  ordinary  curriculum  at  a  common  middle  school 
includes  moral  philosophy,"  etc  etc.  ^ 

But  this  is  by  no  means  all.  As  everybody  now 
knows — though  it  was  known  to  few  ten  years  ago — the 
profession  of  arms  in  Japan  is  controlled  by  a  highly 
developed  ethical  code  —  no  mere  affair  of  military 
etiquette  among  officers,  but  a  well -understood  moral 
discipline  for  every  man  in  the  army.  We  are  assured 
by  competent  witnesses  that  this  system — known  as 
Bushido — is  the  controlling  influence  in  the  life  of  the 
Japanese  soldier ;  and  since  military  service  is  com- 
pulsory, it  becomes  directly  a  factor  of  the  first  import- 
ance in  forming  the  moral  character  of  the  nation.  A 
brief  description  is  as  follows  : — 

"  Frugality,  fealty,  filial  piety — these  may  be  called  the  funda- 
mental virtues  of  the  Samurai.  To  be  swayed  in  the  smallest 
degree  by  mercenary  motives   was  despicable  in  his  eyes.^     He 

1  Ency.  Brit.,  article  "  Japan  "  (new  volumes). 

2  An  occasional  outbreak  of  lawlessness  does  not,  I  submit,  affect  the 
general  truth  of  these  statements.  The  self-restraint  of  Japan  would 
be  meaningless  if  there  were  no  lower  forces  to  restrain.  That  some 
portion  of  these  forces  should  escape  control  at  a  moment  of  great 
tension  is  not  surprising. 


340  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

made  self-control  the  ideal  of  his  existence.  .  .  .  The  Samurai 
rose  to  a  remarkable  height  of  moral  nobility.  .  .  .  The  Samurai 
entertained  a  high  regard  for  the  obligations  of  truth.  '  A  Bushi 
has  no  second  word,"*  was  one  of  his  principal  mottoes.  ...  A 
pledge  or  promise  must  never  be  broken,  but  the  duty  of  veracity 
did  not  override  the  interests  or  the  welfare  of  others.  .  .  .  Lifted 
high  above  his  surroundings,  he  [the  enlightened  hero]  is  prepared 
to  meet  every  fate  with  indifference.  The  attainment  of  this  state 
seems  to  have  been  a  fact  in  the  case  both  of  the  Samurai  of  the 
military  epoch  and  of  the  Japanese  soldier  to-day. '''  ^ 

What  the  fruit  of  such  a  system  may  be  in  dealing 
with  the  problems  of  international  ethics  was,  at  the 
conclusion  of  the  war,  written  in  letters  so  large  that 
all  the  world  may  read.  The  action  of  Japan  in  waiv- 
ing her  claim  to  a  Russian  indemnity  can  be  understood 
only  by  assuming  that  her  statesmen  acted  therein  as 
the  representatives  of  a  nation  whose  moral  instincts 
have  been  trained  to  a  high  level  of  discernment  and 
vigour.  Sordid  explanations  cannot  rob  her  conduct 
of  its  due :  beyond  all  gainsaying  she  thus  rendered  the 
most  illustrious  service  of  modern  times  towards  raising 
the  standard  by  which  the  nations  are  to  be  judged. 

Quid  adhic  egemus  testibus  ?  There  may,  indeed,  be 
those  who,  on  learning  that  Japanese  ethics  square 
neither  with  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  nor  "the 
greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number,"  neither 
with  Aristotle,  Hobbes,  Butler,  nor  Green,  will  deny 
that  they  are  ethics  at  all.  This  would  be  obviously 
absurd.  Nor  does  it  affect  the  issue  that  the  Japanese 
ideal  of  character  is  not  the  highest  known  to  mankind 
— that,  for  example,  the  Christian  is  higher.  This  is  a 
side  issue.  The  point  is  that  a  moral  ideal,  be  it  high 
or  low,  is  the  basis  of  Japanese  education.     From  this 

^  Ency,  Brit.f  article  "  Japan  "  (new  volumes). 


THE   MORAL   SUPREMACY   OF  CHRISTENDOM     341 

general  fact  the  most  important  consequences  follow. 
It  means  that  the  will-power  of  the  community  is 
undergoing  a  process  of  continuous  cultivation ;  that 
individual  selfishness  is  being  checked,  that  the  sense 
of  obligation  to  some  kind  of  "not-self"  is  being 
wrought  into  the  fibre  of  the  race ;  in  a  word,  that 
character  is  being  formed,  nourished,  and  inspired.^ 

3.  Art. — It  is  no  easy  matter  for  Europeans,  at  all 
events  for  Englishmen,  to  understand  what  Art  has 
done  in  building  up  the  virility  of  this  Far  Eastern 
race.  The  whole  situation  is  strange  to  our  experience, 
so  strange  that  we  even  question  if  the  picture  can  be 
true.^  And  yet  if  there  is  one  point  on  which  all  com- 
petent witnesses  agree  it  is  this  :  that  the  love  of  beauty 
is  an  active  force  in  the  daily  life  of  the  whole  Japanese 
nation  ;  that  the  power  to  appreciate  beauty  is  developed 

^  Mr  Harada  affirms  that  Japanese  character  has  four  principal 
qualities.  "The  first,"  he  says,  is  "  Giri,  the  Sense  of  Ought."  I 
may  mention  the  others  at  this  point :  (2)  Hoon,  the  Sense  of 
Gratitude.  "  I  remember  being  frequently  taught  as  a  child  that 
to  be  ungrateful  is  to  be  brutish.  .  .  .  We  have  it  impressed  upon 
us  from  our  childhood  on,  that  nothing  is  so  base  as  ingratitude." 
(3)  Renketsu  no  Sei,  the  Spirit  of  Disinterestedness.  '^^We  have  a 
saying :  ^  The  true  gentleman  does  not  think  about  his  own  advan- 
tage.' .  .  .  This  spirit  existed  among  all  classes  down  to  the 
common  day  labourer.  ...  It  is  in  consequence  of  this  spirit  of 
disinterestedness  that  there  are  many  who  endure  hardships  and  are 
content  to  remain  poor."  (4)  Chuko,  the  Virtue  of  Loyalty  and 
Filial  Piety.  This  spirit  is  "essentially  the  same  as  that  expressed 
by  the  Apostle's  words,  'none  of  us  liveth  to  himself,  and  no  man 
dieth  to  himself.'  Loyalty  and  filial  piety  are  to-day  the  greatest 
inspiration  to  millions  of  Japanese." — T.  Harada,  from  an  Address 
on  Japanese  Character,  published  in  the  Tokyo  Maishu  Shinshi,  Aug. 
23,  1894. 

2  The  case  of  Ancient  Greece,  which  is  sometimes  cited,  is,  of  course, 
far  from  being  a  parallel.     There  is  no  slave  population  in  Japan. 


S42  THE  ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

in  every  class ;  that  the  poor  multitudes,  no  less  than 
the  few  rich,  are  by  nature  at  once  the  lovers  and  the 
critics  of  the  beautiful ;  that  they  seek  it  with  the  in- 
stinctive pertinacity  of  an  animal  in  quest  of  its  food, 
and  rejoice  when  it  is  found.  With  us  the  beautiful 
is  an  adornment  and  a  luxury,  with  them  it  is  daily 
meat  and  drink ;  with  us  it  is  the  purchased  posses- 
sion of  the  rich,  with  them  it  is  the  birthright  of  the 
people.^ 

What  follows?  In  the  social  life  of  the  Japanese 
there  is  a  marked  absence  of  the  spirit  of  restlessness 
with  which  we  have  become  so  familiar  in  the  West — 
the  spirit  of  baffled  endeavour  and  unsatisfied  desire, 
born  of  distress,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  luxury  on 
the  other,  which  more  perhaps  than  any  other  single 
cause  disturbs  and  hinders  the  best  life  of  men.  The 
Japanese  as  an  individual  unit  still  retains  that  quality 
of  self-poise  which  enables  him  to  see  life  steadily  and 
see  it  whole.  And  we  do  not  hesitate  to  assign  the 
origin  of  this  quality,  in  large  measure,  to  the  national 
love  of  beauty,  both  in  nature  and  art.  **  He  who 
possesses  any  one  of  the  virtues,"  says  a  modern 
Aristotelean,  *'  possesses  in  that  measure  all  the  rest "  ; 
and  it  is  not  hard  for  us  to  see  how  the  individual 
citizen  of  Japan  is  made,  by  his  possession  of  this  one 
gift,  into  a  better  man  all  round.  The  sense  which 
takes  delight  in  beautiful  things  saves  his  life  from 
becoming  a  process  of  exhaustion.  He  knows  how  to 
rest,  and  his  leisure  is  an  opportunity  for  genuine 
happiness  and  recuperation.  Incessant  resort  to  de- 
ceitful  stimulants   is  not  necessary.     He   is   under  no 

1  I  would  here  refer  the  reader  to  Lafcadio  Hearn,  Gleanings  in 
JBuddka  Fieldsj  passim.     See  also  Mortimer  Menpes,  A  Study  in  Colour. 


THE   MORAL  SUPREMACY   OF  CHRISTENDOM     34S 

compulsion  to  be  perpetually  running  away  from  him- 
self, for  he  has  resources  within.  The  mood  of  a  man 
who  cannot  be  anywhere  without  at  once  desiring  to  be 
somewhere  else — the  motoritis  of  character — is  not  his. 
He  can  be  content  under  privations  which  no  European 
would  tolerate ;  can  retain  the  dignity  of  a  man  in  the 
midst  of  extreme  poverty ;  can  find  in  all  conditions  a 
sufficient  joy  in  life.  He  considers  the  lilies  of  the  field, 
and  learns  that  lesson  which  the  Christian  nations  of  the 
West  have  set  their  faces  not  to  learn.  He  finds  his 
happiness  in  that  which  makes  others  happy  also,  and 
the  vision  of  "  a  joy  in  widest  commonalty  spread  "  is 
never  wholly  absent  from  his  mind. 

This  is  the  character  of  Japan — not  of  a  favoured  and 
fortunate  few,  but  of  the  people.  So  bred  and  nurtured, 
she  has  accumulated  a  vast  reserve  of  moral  force.  Her 
people  are  normally  self-collected,  and  the  instinct  of 
order  is  in  their  blood.  The  cry  of  panem  et  circenses 
has  been  rarely  heard  within  her  borders.  Thanks,  in 
part,  to  her  love  of  beauty,  she  has  vien  for  her  citizens. 
Each  unit  in  her  ranks  is  a  unit  of  moral  force,  and  the 
impetus  of  their  combined  movement  is  moral  also. 
This  is  higher  than  Gothic  violence  and  more  even  than 
the  strenuous  life.  Here  we  may  see  how  a  love  of  the 
beauty  of  simple  things  and  a  care  for  the  Fine  Arts, 
entering  as  co-efficients  into  the  structure  of  a  nation's 
character,  may  so  operate  as  to  sharpen  the  wisdom  of 
the  serpent  for  a  finer  discernment  and  to  nerve  the 
strength  of  the  tiger  for  a  surer  spring.  To  many 
persons  it  may  appear  incredible  that  the  consistence  of 
Japan's  statesmanship  and  strategy,  the  far  reach  of  her 
military  plans,  the  splendid  qualities  of  her  soldiers  and 
sailors,  the  steadiness  of  nerve,  the  accuracy  of  aim,  the 


844  THE  ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

coolness  of  advance,  the  deadliness  of  attack,  the  self- 
immolation  of  regiments  at  the  word  of  command,  are 
not  unconnected  with  the  fact  that  she  alone  among 
living  nations  has  a  truly  national  art,  that  her  senses 
are  refined  and  her  taste  fastidious,  that  her  poor  love 
beauty  and  seek  their  pleasure  among  flowers.  This  is 
a  hard  saying,  but  the  truth  is  even  so. 

"  Isles  of  blest  Japan, 
Should  your  Yamato  spirit 
Strangers  seek  to  scan, 
Say,  scenting  morn's  sun-lit  air, 
Blows  the  cherry,  wild  and  fair."  ^ 

It  would  be  an  easy  task  to  exhibit  the  weak  points 
of  Japanese  ethics,  but  this  task  I  shall  not  undertake. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  I  have  no  intention  to  represent 
them  as  a  race  of  morally  perfect  beings.  Nothing  of 
the  kind  can  be  reasonably  maintained,  nor  is  it  needed 
for  the  purpose  of  this  argument.  Let  this  only  be 
granted  :  that  the  strength  of  Japan  hes  in  the  existence 
among  the  people  at  large  of  a  disciplined  moral  will, 
and  in  the  general  diffusion  of  moral  culture;  that 
Morality  and  Art  —  the  Good  and  the  Beautiful  — 
are  national  interests ;  and  it  follows  that  the  rise  of 
Japan  forebodes  the  rise  of  a  new  and  serious  claim  to 
the  moral  supremacy  of  the  world.  To  appreciate  the 
meaning  of  this  it  needs  only,  in  the  second  place,  that 
we  should  place  in  contrast  the  conditions  prevailing 
among  ourselves.  We  have  the  Christian  ideal ;  but  we 
must  confess,  in  sober  truth,  that  the  Christian  ideal 
does  not  control  the  great  tides  of  Western  energy. 
What,  then,  does  control  them  ?  Shall  we  fall  back  on 
the  Gothic    qualities   of  **  chivalry   and   honour,"   and 

1  Translation  of  a  Japanese  verse  in  Nitobe's  Buskido. 


THE   MORAL   SUPREMACY   OF   CHRISTENDOM     345 

uphold  these  as  the  operative  ideal  of  the  West  ?  One 
could  wish  indeed  that  this  were  possible  ;  but  he  would 
be  a  bold  man  who  should  affirm  that  chivalry  and 
honour  were  the  keynote  to,  say,  the  last  fifty  years  of 
European  history.  The  policy  of  Bismarck  or  the  story 
of  our  Colonial  expansion  may  serve  to  illustrate  the 
maxims  of  Rob  Roy,  but  in  their  broad  outlines  they  have 
almost  as  little  to  do  with  chivalry  and  honour  as  they 
have  with  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  The  truth  is,  that 
if  search  be  made  for  any  conception  of  social  and  inter- 
national ethics  which  the  nations  of  Christendom  are 
agreed  in  striving  to  realise,  we  are  finally  forced  to 
confess  that  such  a  conception  does  not  exist ;  for  these 
nations  have  in  practice  long  turned  their  backs  on  the 
Christian  ideal,  and  they  have  found  no  other  to  take  its 
place.  The  contrast,  then,  reduces  itself  to  this :  that 
whereas  Japan  has  both  a  national  art  and  a  national 
morality,  we  have  neither.  This  does  not  mean,  of  course, 
that  there  may  not  be  tens  of  thousands  of  individuals 
among  us  who  cultivate  the  loftiest  ideals  of  private 
character  and  plead  for  righteousness  in  public  aflPairs ; 
it  means  that  the  community,  as  such,  can  appeal  to  no 
common  ideal  for  the  moral  inspiration  of  its  acts. 
**  Cities,"  says  Plato,  *'  cannot  exist  if  a  few  only  share 
in  the  virtues  as  in  the  arts." 

That  we  have  here  a  grave  weakness  in  the  claim  of 
Christendom  to  moral  supremacy  there  cannot  be  the 
shadow  of  a  doubt,  nor  will  the  effect  of  that  weakness 
be  long  in  making  itself  felt  if  it  be  true  that  Japan  is 
strong  at  the  precise  point  where  we  are  so  conspicu- 
ously weak.  The  effect  indeed  has  long  been  manifest 
in  the  inner  evolution  of  Western  society.  The  absence 
of  a  moral  ideal  for  the  community  has  had  its  counter- 


846  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

part  in  the  appearance  of  masses  of  human  beings, 
grouped  chiefly  in  the  great  towns,  who  seem  to 
lack  the  power  of  self-guidance,  a  dangerous  and 
ever-increasing  element  of  the  population,  whose  mis- 
fortune is  not  that  of  being  poor  or  rich — for  they  are  to 
be  found  in  both  classes — but  rather  the  demoralisation 
and  decay  of  the  Will.  This  gradual  deterioration  of 
will-power  is  an  evil  which  few  social  reformers  have  yet 
measured  in  its  full  extent,  and  too  little  is  being  done 
to  stem  its  further  growth.  Perhaps  the  example  of 
Japan  may  teach  us  ere  it  is  too  late  that  one  of  the 
highest  aims  of  a  community  is  to  maintain  the  moral 
vigour  of  its  members,  to  increase  it  by  discipline,  and 
to  provide  it  with  inspirations.  Not  only  have  we  failed 
to  do  this ;  we  have  scarcely  realised  that  it  needs  to 
be  done.  It  is  precisely  in  respect  of  moral  culture 
that  our  educational  system — in  this  country  at  least — 
betrays  its  worst  defect.  The  very  faultiness  of  our 
methods,  on  which  we  have  remarked  elsewhere,  is  only 
a  further  proof  that  the  intelligence  of  the  nation  is  not 
awake  to  the  importance  of  the  subject.  A  formal 
alliance  exists  between  the  Church  and  the  School ;  but 
this  alliance,  in  spite  of  the  inseparable  connection 
between  Religion  and  Ethics,  has  failed,  so  far,  to  be 
productive  of  any  combined  and  intelligent  endeavour 
to  build  up  the  character  of  the  people.  For  religion 
itself  has  drifted  away  from  its  ethical  basis ;  hence 
"religious  teaching"  has  come  to  mean  anything  and 
everything  except  the  one  thing  it  ought  to  mean.  All 
kinds  of  side  issues — some  of  which  are  none  too  credit- 
able to  the  parties  concerned — have  been  suffered  to 
obscure  the  central  purpose  of  education.  We  have 
made  idols  of  our  theological  jealousies  and  ecclesiastical 


THE   MORAL  SUPREMACY   OF  CHRISTENDOM    347 

divisions,  and  in  blind  devotion  to  these  have  trusted  to 
scraps  of  doctrinal  patter  to  form  the  manhood  of  the 
race,  and  to  save  us  from  being  as  Sodom  and  Gomorrah 
in  the  day  of  judgment.  Bushido  may  be  a  poor  thing 
— I  do  not  think  so — but  what  would  one  give  for  a 
breath  of  Bushido  among  the  vicious  and  ansemic  youths 
who  throng  the  lighted  thoroughfares  of  our  great  towns, 
among  the  idle  rich,  among  the  drunken  thousands  of 
Glasgow,  Liverpool,  Birmingham,  or  the  East  End  ? 

Hitherto  it  has  been  taken  for  granted  that  political 
as  well  as  moral  supremacy  belonged  of  right  to  the 
West.  As  every  people  in  Europe  knows  to  its  bitter 
cost,  the  Great  Powers  have  long  been  engaged  in  a 
baneful  strife  as  to  who  should  be  greatest ;  and  in 
speculating  upon  the  outcome  of  this  rivalry,  it  has 
always  been  assumed  that  the  first  place  in  the  dominion 
of  the  whole  world  must  necessarily  fall  to  the  successful 
competitor.  But  now  Japan  has  spoilt  the  game.  The 
victory  of  any  of  the  Great  Powers  over  any  other, 
whether  in  wealth  or  war,  would  decide  nothing,  so  far 
as  world-dominion  was  concerned,  since  Japan — and  all 
that  lies  behind  Japan — would  still  have  to  be  reckoned 
with.  For  what  boots  it  to  strive  who  shall  be  greatest 
when  a  possible  greater  stands  outside  of  the  dispute  ? 
Cadit  qucestio. 

Thus,  though  nothing  can  be  foreseen,  it  is  not 
unreasonable  to  hope  that  one  indirect  result  of  the 
rise  of  Japan  will  be  to  cool  the  jealousies  of  the  Great 
Powers  and  to  establish  the  prospect  of  a  long-continued 
European  peace.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  by  far  the 
largest  part  of  the  energies  of  Christendom  have  hitherto 
been  used  up  in  preparing  for  mutual  destruction,  it  is 


348  THE   ALCHEMY   OF  THOUGHT 

small  wonder  that  these  communities  have  developed 
internal  evils  which  make  their  civilisation,  if  not  a 
failure,  at  all  events  a  meagre  success.  Judged  by  the 
condition  of  the  masses  of  the  people,  there  is  not  one 
of  the  great  lands  of  Christendom  which  can  boast 
itself  free  from  the  danger  of  moral  and  physical  ^  decay. 
All  their  energies  are  needed  for  the  remedy  of  the 
mischiefs  hence  arising ;  they  have  none  to  spare  upon 
the  blowing  of  each  other's  souls  into  eternity.  The 
question  whether  this  one  shall  rise  or  that  one  fall  is 
of  little  moment  compared  with  the  greater  question 
whether  all  are  not  falling  together.  The  answer  to 
that  depends  on  how  long  they  are  content  to  postpone 
the  interests  of  manhood  to  the  interests  of  wealth. 
To  pretend  that  this  is  beyond  the  wit  of  man  is  to 
overlook  the  fact  that  the  wit  of  man  has  never  yet 
been  fully  employed  in  the  enterprise.  When  the 
Christian  states  of  Europe  have  given  as  much  thought 
to  securing  the  conditions  of  a  noble  manhood  for  the 
masses  of  the  population  as  they  have  hitherto  spent 
in  devising  mischief  for  each  other,  it  will  be  time  to 
decide  whether  the  higher  education  of  the  people  is 
or  is  not  beyond  the  wit  of  man.  Certain  it  is,  that 
if  the  rise  of  Japan  as  a  moral  and  political  force  leads, 
as  we  may  reasonably  hope  it  will,  to  the  cooling  of 
our  Western  jealousies  and  the  liberation  of  some  part 
of  the  social  energies  hitherto  wasted  in  their  service, 
we  shall  have  good  reasons  for  regarding  her  as  a 
benefactor  of  mankind. 

And    greater    gains    should    follow.      The    task    of 
bringing  the  energies  of  Western  civilisation  under  the 

1  See  the  Debate  on  Physical  Deterioration  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
20th  July  1905. 


THE   MORAL   SUPREMACY   OF   CHRISTENDOM     349 

actual  control  of  its  religious  ideal  will  be  brought  into 
a  new  prominence.  Familiar  but  forgotten  truths  will 
rise  into  remembrance — that  for  nations,  as  for  indi- 
viduals, the  mere  profession  of  Christianity  is  a  vain 
thing:  that  the  claim  of  Christianity  to  be  supreme 
must  assuredly  fail  unless  it  finds  its  exponent  in  reno- 
vated national  life.  It  is  good  for  us  thus  to  realise 
that  our  ideals  and  our  practice  are  at  variance,  even 
though  it  be  the  finger  of  a  non- Christian  race  that  is 
pointing  to  the  breach.  All  our  Christian  pride  will 
not  prevent  us  from  taking  heed.  It  is,  indeed,  the 
conviction  of  the  writer  that  the  present  hour  is  the 
fullest  of  hope  for  humanity  which  the  world  has  seen 
for  long  ages.  Not  the  least  element  of  that  hope  is 
the  prospect  of  a  union  between  the  forces  of  Christi- 
anity and  Buddhism  for  the  uplifting  of  mankind.  For 
these  two  religions,  in  their  highest  expressions,  are  not 
estranged.  They  are  approaching  each  other  ;  and  their 
approach  is  the  dawn  of  a  better  age. 


PRINTED  BY  NEILL  AND  CO.,   LTD.,   EDINBURGH. 


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